Any gardener and just a person who likes to delve into his country house is aware that many mice live in his garden or garden. One of them is a field vole. This mouse is spread all over the world, and still continues to surprise scientists with some features of its behavior.
In this respect resembling moles, they dig deep holes. But unlike them, near the voles, the entrance to the dwelling is on the side, in the dump of the earth. In addition, the mounds themselves are much more gentle.
Among other things, all of their moves have several inputs and outputs at once. Only one stroke can stretch for 25-30 meters, located at a depth of up to 0.4 m.
There are numerous nesting chambers in which the vole breeds. This mouse is so prolific that in especially good seasons it sometimes fills the fields.
And no wonder: in a good year for her, one female displays eight litters, each of which has six cubs! A simple calculation: if there are not enough predators, then out of five voles, 8.5 thousand adult mice can be obtained. And this is for the season! As you can see, the vole is a mouse prone to rapid reproduction.
She spends all day in her hiding place, daring to come to the surface only in the evening. By the way, what does a mouse vole eat? It feeds mainly on plant food, causing real hatred among agricultural producers. The colony of these rodents causes enormous damage to the fields, eating several tons of high-quality grain per year!
It should be noted that these mice are real "gourmets" who will never drag bad food into their hole. Often they find pantries of these animals, in which up to several kilograms of qualitatively selected grain of wheat, rye and oats are stored.
The peculiarity of voles is not only in rapid metabolism (as in other rodents), but also in the rapid growth of teeth: in order to grind them off, the animal must constantly nibble. During the day, only one animal eats food, the weight of which is equal to its own weight.
Any vole is a mouse that gardeners especially “love”. The fact is that they are active even in winter. Needing feed, field voles cleanly gnaw the lower parts of tree trunks, which is why they simply die.
To distinguish this animal from an ordinary gray mouse is simple: it has a much more pleasant color and a short tail. Long rains, as well as sudden and severe winter thaws, are especially dangerous for voles. It burrows holes, in winter the water freezes in them, depriving rodents of food, shelter and heat.
The population of birds of prey is very important in regulating their numbers. The average owl in one year alone can eat up to one and a half thousand voles. All foxes, martens, ferrets and weasels generally prefer to eat only them. Weasel, for example, in one day can eat up to 20 well-fed mice. In addition, cuns can make their way directly into their burrows, since the structure of the body allows them to make their way through long and narrow tunnels.
Note that as a result of the rash application of pesticides and poisons, mice die, but not all. Poisoned, they are eaten by owls and carnivorous mammals, whose mortality just reaches 100%.
As a result, surviving mice in just a couple of months increase their number tens of times. The result is a real environmental disaster, the responsibility for which is not a mouse vole (the photo of which is in the article), but a man.
