The Adirondacks are home to six species of weasel: the American marten, fisher, long-tailed and short-tailed weasels, river otters, and minks. There used to be one more, the wolverine.
Wolverines are my favorite animal, and the reason I chose to study wildlife biology These critters are 30 pounds of sass, attitude, and raw ferocity. They will take down a full grown elk, scale a 10,000 ft peak, and chase a grizzly bear away from a carcass. They also eat bones.
When’s the last time you crunched down a moose femur?
That’s pretty damn impressive for a large weasel, they patrol territories of several hundred square miles, climb over steep glaciers and patrol hundreds of miles of rugged terrain One Wolverine (nicknamed Mr Badass) summited a 10,000 foot peak in Glacier National Park in the middle of winter. He did the last 4900 ft in less than 90 minutes.
Now that’s one hell of a first ascent.
The scientific name for a Wolverine is Gulo gulo, meaning glutton glutton. They will eat anything they can catch, steal, or dig up, and they eat all of it. Imagine trying to survive a winter in Glacier National Park. Their strategy is the lope throughout their territories until they find something to eat, then eat everything, including bones and fur.
If you were to touch a wolverine’s stomach in the winter it would feel like gravel. Filled with bone splinters and fragments, wolverines are one of the few animals with a jaw strong enough to crush and chew bone and frozen meat. This allows them to eat what others cannot, and waste nothing. They are built to survive.
Long claws for cramp-ons, a thick double layered coat, and a whole lot of tenacity. What more do you need?
We don’t have wolverines in the Adirondacks, but we used to. They were last reported in New York in 1840. Their extirpation came from a combination of trapping,deforestation, and the decline of large mammals (and their carcasses) which wolverines feed on.
Today only their smaller cousins roam our peaks.
Classified under the phylum Carnivora, Mustelidae is the weasel family. The line of carnivores that gets the least attention and the worst reputation. Wolverines are the largest terrestrial critter in this family, second in size only to the swimming weasels (next time you’re board google “giant otter”)
The wolverine populations out west appear to be stable, though it is estimated that only 300-1000 inhabit in the lower 48.
The wolverines made headlines in August when a family of three was spotted in Mt Rainier National Park for the first time in over a century.
They are an incredibly rare sight, read about any members of the mustelid family and you’ll come across terms like “elusive”, “phantom”, and “ghosts of the forest”.
Even if you live out west, chances are you’ve never seen a wolverine, but here in the Adirondacks you may have seen a marten. In New York the vast majority of American martens (Martes americanus) are found in the central High Peaks of the Adirondacks.
Wolverines in miniature, Martens are specialized hunters, and expert climbers. They will eat anything they can catch, but their arboreal nature makes them particularly adept at pursuing red squirrels.
They are omnivores, and will also eat insects, frogs, fish, and berries. In late summer when the bilberries are ripe in the alpine zone, you might spot bright purple marten scat on the summit of Marcy or Algonquin.
You may have heard the american marten referred to as a pine marten, pine martens are in fact a different species, Martes martes that reside across the pond in Europe.
Martens are sometimes confused with the larger fishers, or fisher cats. The main difference is size and coloration, but even these can overlap. In general martens are smaller in size and lighter in color.
If you are at higher elevation in the High Peaks, and spot a weasel on the trail, it is likely it is a marten.
Martens can go where fishers cannot. The two carnivores compete for resources, but Fishers don’t make it up the high peaks (as far as we know), they tend to inhabit the lower elevation forests and even the outskirts of suburban areas. They are often wrongfully accused of eating the family cat (Coyotes are far more likely to be the culprit).
One thing fishers do eat are porcupines, and they are one of the few predators that can do it. They attack the face, and eventually expose the soft underside.
On the smaller end of the spectrum are the short tailed and long-tailed weasels, if you saw one of these in the woods you might think someone’s ferret had escaped.
Short tailed weasels, or ermines, look like brown ferrets with a white belly. They change color in the winter, a pure white with a black tip on their tail. They eat mostly small mammals, but have been documented eating snowshoe hares, and are well known for murdering chickens.
In fact their reputation as chicken killers has gotten a little out of control. The rumor is that they “kill for fun”, getting into a chicken coup and biting into the necks of every living bird then dragging them to corners of the room leaving a bloody feathered crime scene in its wake.
This does happen, but there is an explanation. Ermines only turn to chickens when natural prey is scarce, and like every other hunter they have predatory instincts. If something is running away it triggers an instinct to chase and kill it (this is why we don’t run away from bears). Once the deed has been done, and the little ermine realizes it can’t possibly eat twelve chickens, it tries to stash them for later.
Okay, so maybe these guys do go on killing sprees. But it’s just to eat, and in the end who can really blame them.
Long-tailed weasels are like the short-tailed weasels but with long tails. In one Connecticut study of the two species, DNA samples were needed to tell the two apart. I tend to just call both an ermine.
On the aquatic end, are the more familiar minks and otters.
Minks are well known for their fur, a semi-aquatic mammal that lives on the water’s edge and eats frogs, muscles, crayfish, and everything in-between. You might see one running along the water’s edge, perhaps diving in to grab a tasty crayfish or muscle.
All the weasels stay in motion. Otters are nomadic, and travel from one body of water to the next, especially in the winter months. Several years back one was spotted loping across the ski slopes of Gore Mountain, and I once saw one swimming around the open water of the Minnie Haha in Lake George in February.
And that brings us back to the wolverine. All the mustelids have a few things in common. A fearless personality, a ferocious reputation, and the desire to eat everything.
Next time you’re out for a hike, keep a sharp eye out, and you might be lucky enough to see one of these elusive critters.
For more information on Adirondack Weasels and other ADK mammals check out the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s website
Photo Credit for Feature Image: Henry Liebers