Not all of the animals of the Territories are as glamorous as foxes, bears, and pelicans but the humble muskrat can be a surprising character. They are a familliar sight for anyone who has walked alongside a marsh or slow-moving river.
Muskrats get their name from the musk glands on their behinds which they use to mark their territory and send signals during breeding season.
Muskrats are excellent divers and swimmers. Their back feet are only partially webbed and the four long toes on each foot have a fringe of specialized hairs along each side, giving the foot a paddle-like effect. The muskrat can remain underwater for up to 15 minutes. Good thing too because muskrats like to eat.
Muskrats have specially developed teeth that stick out in front of their lips and cheeks. This means they can chew on things underwater with their mouth closed. Good thing too because most of what they eat is underwater.
Their favourite food is cattails but they also eat bulrushes, horsetails, or pondweeds, and other plants, including sedges, wild rice, and willows. If these plant foods are scarce or not available, muskrats will eat fish, frogs, and clams. Muskrats can find food during the winter under a metre of ice and snow, in ice-cold water and almost total darkness and eat one-third of their body weight (1kg) every day.
Muskrats are promiscuous in the spring when breeding is in full swing. Males compete fiercely for females who give birth a litter of 5 to 10 young, a little less than a month after breeding. Females will often have a second litter a month after the first and sometimes even have a third litter a month after the second.
The muskrat is more widely distributed in North America than almost any other mammal but has a cyclical pattern of boom and bust in terms of numbers, similar to the snowshoe hare. Numbers peak every seven to ten years while at the low point thousands of muskrats can virtually disappear within 2 to 3 years with populations recovering just 1-2 years afterward. Theory suggests that individual health declines leading to reproductive failure and death and that predators and trapping are not to blame for drastic declines in numbers.
One of the most interesting facts I learned while researching muskrats is that they contribute more to the total combined income of North American trappers than any other mammal.
In spite of human activity and heavy trapping pressure, muskrats have never been endangered in Canada and numbers today are probably almost as high as they were a thousand years ago.
Next time you see a muskrat take a moment to think about how resilient these little animals are. Sort of like a cute and furry cockroach!
Thanks for stopping by and learning more about our northern wildlife.