An ermine was met at the stadium in the Krasnoyarsk campus / News from the society of Krasnoyarsk and the Krasnoyarsk region / Newslab.Ru

A Krasnoyarsk woman at the Dynamo stadium in the Student Town saw and photographed a very rare animal in these places – an ermine.

“I visit the birch grove and the stadium almost every day. Squirrels rule here, and chipmunks are sometimes found. I saw rats, stray dogs, and domestic rabbits here, but I saw an ermine for the first time,” says Elena. According to her, a white animal with a dark tail ran along the concrete part of the stadium fence, first in one direction, then turned around, rushed back and disappeared into the grove.

Specialists from the Stolby National Park noted some time ago that the number of this animal is very small. They estimated that there were no more than ten individuals in the park. Meeting an ermine in the city is a rare success.

It prefers to stay near streams, in cluttered places, settles next to bushes, in young spruce forests, and avoids pine forests and swamps. The ermine leads a secretive lifestyle. In summer, the animal is sharply two-colored, with a white bottom and a reddish-brown top, and in winter its skin becomes white and the tip of its tail becomes dark. It is needed for protection from enemies: in the snow, predators first of all pay attention to a moving black object, attack it, as a rule, unsuccessfully, and the nimble stoat instantly hides.

The stoat is omnivorous. Its daily need for animal food (voles, pikas, chipmunks, squirrels, shrews, moles, birds, their eggs and chicks, frogs, snakes, lizards, fish, large insects) is small. In case of an unsuccessful hunt, he supplements his diet with carrion, human waste, blueberries and lingonberries.