Animal of the week | An icy winter is coming – even if a person has the fur of an arctic fox

Winter comes and electric heaters are in for a cold ride. Need to dig out the fur hats and layers, maybe invest in merino wool underwear.

I wish a human had the same fur as a polecat. A naal’s coat is probably the thickest of all animals and best insulates heat.

It is needed, because in their habitat covering the entire Arctic Ocean environment, these little white foxes may be exposed to temperatures of up to 60 degrees below zero.

When the body temperature of a nael is about 39 degrees, so the difference between its body temperature and the outside temperature can be up to a hundred degrees.

Nevertheless, the cold does not dig into the bones of the fox. By curling up, the fox keeps itself warm in the freezing cold. The winter coat of a naal is up to three times thicker than its summer, darker coat.

There is also hair on the bottom of the paws, and in addition, the blood circulation in the legs of the weasel works so that its tissues do not freeze, even if the animal paws in the freezing cold.

Nalin understandably, fur has been a desired item for the inhabitants of the north. In peak times, you could pay as much as a worker’s monthly salary for one fur.

Polecats were once hunted almost to extinction in the Nordic region. In Finland, there are maybe 15 adults left, an estimated 450 in all of Fennoscandia. Globally, however, the mink is not endangered.

Recently happy news was heard: the fox has successfully nested in Finland, for the first time since 1996. A mother and three chicks were spotted on the nest mound in Enontekiö in mid-July.

The slow return of jackals has been made possible by diligent conservation work, such as the construction of nesting machines and the hunting of the jackal’s worst enemy, the fox, in the north. Also, the naal’s favorite food, i.e. sopules, has now been better served.

At one time, however, the polecat population was reduced to nothing, and climate change is changing the nature of the north in such a way that it remains to be seen whether the polecat will ever survive in Finland again without artificial respiration provided by humans.