Hermine
The hermine ( Mustela erminea ) is an animal of the family of the Mustélidé S.
Description
Its peeling is, in summer, brown dark top and blanchâtre below. In winter, the animal, like the variable Hare and the Grouse, adopts one delivered entirely white except for the end of its tail which remains black. Towards mid-March the hermine its moult starts to find its color of summer right before the season of the loves.
The hermine adult measurement from 22 to 32 cm length plus its tail from 8 to 12 cm, for a varying weight from 125 to 440 grams; the female is in general smaller and lighter than the male.
Life
The hermine meets primarily in mountainous area with the top of 1.000 meters in altitude what protects it naturally. It is thus not an endangered species, more especially as the fur coat of hermine is not any more with the mode and that the French magistrates for a long time agreed to exchange their famous skin of hermine for a skin of rabbit dyed in white.
The hermine nourishes Grenouille S, small Rongeur S, of Oiseau X and Insecte S, but she does not scorn if the opportunity arises some to register with its menu a rabbit. She is active mainly the night. The hermine is however attracted by the refuges, the country cottages of mountain pasture and in a general way all the places attended by the men because it knows that it will be able, with a little chance, to find some foods there.
The period of the loves for the hermines takes place in spring, before the moult of the summer which will make him lose its delivered winter. It is as at that time as they can be observed most easily because they tend to then forget the most obvious principles of safety with respect to their clean predatory.
The female puts low once per annum, in June and in July. Its range is from three to seven small.
The hermines were introduced in New Zealand at the end it 19th century to do the housework among the populations of mice which infested the territory then. Today, the hermines are abundant in the forests of beeches of New Zealand ( Nothofagus sp. ) where the populations of common mice ( Driven musculus ) wild constitute a good part of their food.
See too
Hermine (heraldic)
External references
Simple: Stoat
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