Field Vole

Fascinating facts about the Field Vole

• At just 8-13 cm long and weighing only 20-50 g, the short-tailed field vole fits in the palm of your hand. Its tail is a stubby 3-4 cm, making it look more like a furry cigar than a rodent. Such a tiny body lets it slip through dense grass and burrow shallowly under leaf litter, escaping predators that can't follow. Its low energy reserves last only five to fourteen hours.
• A female short-tailed field vole can produce up to seven litters a year, each with four to six pups that are weaned after about fourteen days. Gestation lasts roughly three weeks, and a single litter may contain up to a dozen young. The newborns suckle for twelve days, leave the nest at twenty-one days, and reach sexual maturity soon after, fueling the dramatic population booms that swing across Europe each spring and summer.
• Spanning from the Atlantic coast to Lake Baikal and even reaching Ireland in 2022, the short-tailed field vole occupies a palearctic belt that climbs to about 1,700 m (5,600 ft). Its preference for moist grasslands, marshes, and river banks means it thrives from sea level up to alpine meadows and showing how adaptable a single small mammal can be across continents.
• Field voles are an important part of the diet of barn owls, kestrels, weasels, stoats, foxes and snakes. Despite their abundance, they are listed as "Least Concern" by the IUCN, reflecting a stable long-term outlook even though local numbers can swing wildly from year to year.

Sources

Every fact above was checked against these pages, and kept only where one of them states it.

• Wikipedia

At a glance

About the Field Vole

In the whispering grasslands, a tiny, unassuming monarch reigns, the field vole, its diminutive form belied by a fierce will to thrive in a world of giants. With furtive, darting movements, it weaves through the dense undergrowth, its bright, inquisitive eyes ever-vigilant for the lurking shadows of predators, as it constructs a hidden realm of intricate tunnels and chambers. As it navigates this secret world, the field vole embodies a testament to the indomitable power of smallness, its very existence a reminder of the magic that lies just beyond the edge of our perception.

Seen on screen

More mammals to discover

Browse Feravox