Hunting Behavior
Weasels are feisty little critters that hunt widely-dispersed and well-hidden prey with impressive predatory efficiency, willowy grace, and electric energy. Most predators tackling prey larger than themselves hunt in groups, but the larger weasels are astonishingly bold, often acting alone to attack a bird or rabbit twice their own size. Smaller weasels hunt by searching every hole, sniffing under fallen logs, following scent trails, and responding to any small sounds that might betray a hidden rodent. They climb trees and swim streams confidently; they burrow under snow and leaves, and patrol underground runways and nests, day and night. They make up in agility what they lack in stature by wrapping their long bodies around a struggling victim to hold it. Their galloping metabolism makes weasels always hungry, and the energy equations of weasel hunting are marginal at most times, but critical when rodent populations decline.
Keywords: searching time, handling time, climbing, swimming, killing behavior, energy, Mustela
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .