Marmot

Animal Wildlife | Marmot | Marmot is a rodent of family Sciuridae (squirrels) to the genus Marmota. Marmots generally live in mountainous areas, such as the Alps and the Pyrenees in Europe, the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada in the United States, and northern Canada. Marmots generally make their nests in the ground and do hibernate during the winter. Most of the marmots classified as social animals; Marmots communicate with each other by whistling loudly, especially when they are in danger.

Marmot’s name comes from the Greek Mures Monti ("mountain rat"), from Classical Latin Mures Alpini ("Alps rat").

The main food of marmot is plants such as grasses, berries, lichens, moss leaves, roots, and flowers.

Another similar-sized animals, but more social, prairie dogs, are not classified in the genus Marmota, but in the genus Cynomys. Meanwhile, in Indonesian, Dutch rats (guinea pig) is often referred to as marmots, despite the fact those rodents are from different families.

Marmots have been an traditional resource of various meats, fat, and fur for beginning Europeans, and a meals resource for Local People in america and in Japan. The record of human-marmot relationship is a lengthy one, with artwork of marmots in Italy tracked to the mid to overdue Pleistocene (Karels, 2004). During the last millennium, marmot fur was stylish in European countries, and it is approximated that Mongolians, who did not use marmot skin typically, ready roughly 132,700 marmot skins a season between 1906 and 1994 (Karels, 2004). In his documents, Marco Polo also represents the marmot, list them as "Pharaoh's mice."

While marmots, such as the Marmota marmota (alpine marmot), were a meals resource for most of the last millennium in European countries, as farming improved they not only became less used, but became seen as an farming pest(Karels, 2004). Now the alpine marmot is seen as an icon of the Alps (Karels, 2004).

Some ground-dwelling squirrels are known as disease vectors to human. These consist of marmots in main Japan that are regarded a considerable service provider of the plague; in Mongolia, marmot searching is prohibited in places known to have plague—although this outcomes in a rise in marmots and the place of the problem (Karels,2004).

Some experts recommend that marmots, rather than mice, were the main providers of the Bubonic epidemic or yersinia pestis during several ancient breakouts (Kelly,2005). Through this, marmots are acknowledged with a loss of life cost of over a million, creating them second only to the malarial insect as a killer of people. Marmots are also acknowledged with sending several hacking and coughing conditions to people.

Ecologically, marmots are a meals resource for such creatures as hawks, wolves, bears, foxes, and coyotes, with the baby marmots particularly subject to predation.

One of the most seriously vulnerable varieties is the Vancouver Isle marmot (Marmota vancouverensis), whose submission is limited to Vancouver Isle, B.C, Canada. In2002, only 25 creatures were known to reside in the outrageous on Vancouver Isle (Karels,2004). There are other varieties in captivity.