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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain

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Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren bog obamb here. The taxonic family of weasels

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Speaker 1: is a motley crewe. They can be slinky and shy

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Speaker 1: like a pine Marten, or grouchy and taciturn like a badger.

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Speaker 1: Ferrets and otters are playfuling curious, and then there are

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Speaker 1: honey badgers, which are basically just berserker weasels. But perhaps

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Speaker 1: the most fascinating weasel is the wolverine. The scientific name

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Speaker 1: for a wolverine is gullo gullo, which is literally Latin

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Speaker 1: for glutton, glutton. I'm not sure whether the team at

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Speaker 1: Marvel knew that when they were designing X Men's brudy antihero,

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Speaker 1: but these animals seem legitimately super heroic, not only in

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Speaker 1: what and how much they managed to eat, but how

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Speaker 1: they generally ace life in the northern forests and alpine

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Speaker 1: tundra they call home. About the size of a midsized dog,

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Speaker 1: but resembling a small bear, a wolverine is a weasel

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Speaker 1: of paradox, weighing in between twenty two and forty pounds.

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Speaker 1: It's about ten to eighteen kilows, the males being larger

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Speaker 1: than the females. They defend territories greater than those presided

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Speaker 1: over by grizzly bears, from forty miles up to three

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Speaker 1: hundred and seventy miles that's between sixty five and six

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Speaker 1: hundred kilometers, and they do it aggressively. They've been known

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Speaker 1: to fight a wolf or even a bear off of

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Speaker 1: a kill. That's said. Wolverines are omnivores, eating pretty much

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Speaker 1: whatever their sensitive noses lead them to ground squirrels, moose,

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Speaker 1: mountain goats, carcasses buried meters under the ice, and snow birds, eggs, berries,

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Speaker 1: et cetera. They'll even dig deep under the snow to

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Speaker 1: kill and eat a hibernating animal, unlike a lot of

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Speaker 1: other Arctic animals that deal with the long, bitter winters

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Speaker 1: by either hibernating or migrating someplace. Ballmere a wolverine's dense,

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Speaker 1: frost resisted coat, which at one time made them a

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Speaker 1: major target for fur trappers. It's snowshoe like paws and

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Speaker 1: the ability to chump through frozen meat and even bones

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Speaker 1: make it possible for them to stay outside in the

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Speaker 1: far North year round. They're all so pretty hyperactive, no

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Speaker 1: matter what time of year it is. One wolverine wearing

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Speaker 1: a tracking device in Grand Tenton National Park was found

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Speaker 1: to have walked over five hundred miles that's over eight

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Speaker 1: hundred kilometers in two months. We spoke with Rebecca Waters,

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Speaker 1: executive director of the Wolverine Foundation based in Bozeman, Montana.

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Speaker 1: She said they can go and go and go, no

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Speaker 1: matter what the terrain is like. They have crazy metabolisms,

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Speaker 1: and they don't hibernate, so they're always out exploring. They've

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Speaker 1: also been known to climb hills and slide down on

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Speaker 1: the snow repeatedly just for fun. While curious and fearless,

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Speaker 1: wolverines are almost pathologically kg. They're nocturnal, so they're used

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Speaker 1: to slinking around in the shadows, and they've been known

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Speaker 1: to stock researchers for miles without being spotted. And just

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Speaker 1: as fur trappers of old had a difficult time catching

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Speaker 1: wolverines and preventing them from robbing their traps, modern researchers

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Speaker 1: have had a hard time finding, following, and catching them.

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Speaker 1: Waters said they're wildly clever and playful. It's very hard

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Speaker 1: to trap a wolverine. If you're trying to catch it

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Speaker 1: to kill it, but they know when a research live

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Speaker 1: trap is out, and they'll return again and again for

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Speaker 1: free meal. Sometimes they'll take apart the camera strops that

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Speaker 1: are set up nearby, or play with loose ropes or wires,

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Speaker 1: But as difficult as they are to find in the flesh,

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Speaker 1: it's not tough to find where they've been. One of

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Speaker 1: the common names for wolverines is skunk bear or stink bear,

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Speaker 1: because they spray various landmarks and sometimes their enemies, with

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Speaker 1: a special concoction of methyl budonic acids from their anal glands,

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Speaker 1: the smell of which has variously been described as sweaty, cheesy,

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Speaker 1: and like a barnyard. They do this to communicate with

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Speaker 1: each other, since one male might have three or more

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Speaker 1: females living in his territory raising his kits or babies

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Speaker 1: with him. Males do help raise the babies. Wolverines also

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Speaker 1: communicate vocally with each other and especially their kits and mother.

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Speaker 1: Wolverines dig burrows sometimes fifteen feet that's four and a

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Speaker 1: half meters under the snow to protect their kids from

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Speaker 1: predators and the coal. Although wolverines are currently considered a

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Speaker 1: species of least concern of extinction, having bounced back after

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Speaker 1: nearly going extinct during the nineteenth century due to habitat

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Speaker 1: loss and aggressive hunting, poisoning, and extermination campaigns. They're currently

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Speaker 1: facing new threats. Waters said. Habitat loss and fragmentation are

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Speaker 1: issues for the population in the lower forty eight States

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Speaker 1: due to development. Wolverines require cold and snow, which is

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Speaker 1: mostly found at high elevations in the lower forty eight.

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Speaker 1: Wolverines have very large territories, so a single mountain range

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Speaker 1: can only hold a few adult animals, and young animals

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Speaker 1: have to find uninhabited territories, often in a different range,

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Speaker 1: if they want to reproduce. All of this is, of

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Speaker 1: course compounded by climate change, which is reducing the amount

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Speaker 1: of cold and snowy habitat in the mountains. As the

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Speaker 1: snowy winter season becomes shorter, wolverine habitat shrinks. Today's episode

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Speaker 1: was written by Joceline Shield and produced by Tyler Clay.

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