Stoats are renowned predators and despite their small size they can hunt animals up to 10x their size such as rabbits. Here a stoat has caught an unfortunate grey squirrel.
I can attest to the power of Mustelids , having owned ferrets / polecats , the next size up in genus Mustela , from a stoat. Adorable & loving creatures , but savage when the prey drive kicks in. Extremely strong for their size & a very capable brain , they are highly intelligent for their small brain sizes.
100%. We have ferrets/polecats ourselves and it's amazing to see how clever they really are and what they're capable of. Also the fearlessness of mustelids is something to admire. Regardless of their size/what they're taking on, they will never back down.
@@olivermcqueen5654 My question is after they bag a kill ten times their size what do they do with what they can't eat? Store it and eat on it over time or abandon it for fresh prey?
@@nonaurbizniz7440 They store their food in places during the winter, wouldn't surprise me if they dragged the Prey and hid it somewhere for later feeding all year round
@@nonaurbizniz7440 Stash , and eat quite quickly. My ferrets & poleys did that, They have to hide prey as quickly as possible, in the wild , or risk another predator stealing their catch.
A Stoat, being a predator, always "hunts" for its' food, where as a squirrel "gathers" their food. Think of a trained MMA fighter taking on a guy, in a fight, who hasn't really fought at all? Huge difference.
@windtalker Squirrel can barely crack into an acorn. A stoat can crack into a rabbit's skull and rabbits are up to 10 times its size. A squirrel would be no match. Also squirrel has chiseled teeth like a mouse. A stoat has a canine like row of teeth. Stoat has a mouth of a predator. Squirrel has to stoat teeth is like a mouse to cat teeth. One is built to feed on nuts and another is built to feed on flesh.
Mustellids and Felines are generally the strongest animals in their class and size. You're not going to beat one just by being a little bigger than it. Simple as that, really. Also, generally speaking. A lot of non-predatory animals tend to avoid fighting even when it's in their best interests. Humans pretty much have to fight bears in order to survive. We consciously can choose to fight. A squirrel just wants to run.
We've got a 3-pack of Stoats that I've seen now two different times... Very cautious little boogers, but we've got squirrels that hang sound our bird feeder so now I understand why the Stoats are poking around these days.
Stoats are very similar to weasels, in the same genus (mustelids) but are slightly larger and have a black tip to the tail. Stoats and weasels are quite small (about the Size of a red squirrel) but can overpower Prey many times their size!
@@TimmyDaSeagull they'll go for baby birds and eggs. New zealand did introduce ermines if I remember to control rats but they also ate ground nesting birds
@@olivermcqueen5654 The genus is (Mustela), Mustelids (Mustelidae) is the Weasel-like family as a whole. Stoat is beleaved to have derived from the Dutch word stout ("bold"), personally i call them Stoat weasel (Mustela ermines) they are a Weasel. Like most common names they differ in other countries, that's why we have scientific names, same all over (when people keep up to date). For example stoat weasel (Mustela ermines) are also known by Eurasian ermine, Beringian ermine, Bonaparte weasel, Ermine, Short-tailed weasel. They are closely related to the Least weasel (Mustela nivalis) -aka- Little weasel, Common weasel, Weasel. Also the formally misidentified as a subspecies of Stoat weasel (Mustela ermines), now recognised as the American Weasel (Mustela richardsonii) - aka - American ermine, American stoat. The Haida weasel (Mustela haidarum) - aka - Haida ermine, beleaved to have originated from hybridisation between the Stoat weasel (Mustela ermines) that found in the northwest of North America and the American Weasel (Mustela richardsonii) that has a bigger North America range. Also there's the recently recognised Chinese missing-toothed weasel (Mustela aistoodonnivalis) - aka - Missing-toothed pygmy weasel, Sichuan weasel, that was first misidentified as a subspecies of Least weasel (Mustela nivalis), but recent genetics placed it more related to the Stoat weasel (Mustela ermines).
