7 Comments

  • Vladimir Dinets

    Least weasels occur in city parks in Eastern Europe and Russia, and ermines live in houses in many Arctic settlements.
    Interesting paper on taxonomy, by the way. I don’t think it’s a good idea to stop recognizing this form as a subspecies. Also, I wonder why the authors didn’t mention the most obvious reason for size increase: adaptation to predation on rats in cities.
    Seems like the weasel is more common in Alexandria than in Cairo. I wonder if Alexandria was the point of initial introduction.

    • Edo van Uchelen

      Dear Vladimir, in the Netherlands weasels ans stoats tends to avoid human settlements (probably due to predation by domestic cast) interesting to read they do not in Eastern Europe. I think the weasels are aslo that big because there are no stoats, this was observed also in nature in Belarus, greetings Edo van Uchelen

      • Vladimir Dinets

        There are stoats in Belarus 🙂 There are many populations of least weasels that leave in places with no stoats and they all tend to be large, but Egyptian ones are the largest.

        Urban weasels in Eastern Europe have very high mortality, but mostly from dogs rather than cats, at least according to one study (I’m trying to remember which one but can’t find it, sorry).

  • Edo van Uchelen

    Dear Nayer, can you send me some details of locations, I might vistit Egypt next year to look for them!

    • Nayer Youakim

      Sorry Edo! Please drop me an email if you’re still after further details (nayer_y@hotmail.com).

      I visited the same site a few months ago, in mid-September, around 2am. There were plenty more cats around, and I didn’t see the same numbers of weasels as before, but it was still quite easy to see a few different animals within 10 minutes or so of my arrival.

  • Nayer Youakim

    Thank you all for your fascinating input! Sorry it’s taken me so long to spot this.

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