2010: Cologne Zoo

Very nice - sadly I have no idea if this species is still in the collection, as it seems to have completely escaped the attention of ZTL that it ever *was* in the collection

Ah, so it is; somehow I missed that listing when I checked a few minutes ago. As I think I mentioned to you before, I narrowly missed seeing the species at two out of the three last holdings in the UK I'm rather tempted, when hopefully visiting Berlin next year, to pop over the border to visit Poznan, which holds this species along with African Palm Civet and European Mink.

I've always thought it was an unfortunate name as well. I've only seen stuffed ones, but they are ferret-sized, certainly not what one would expect from the name.

Well, strictly speaking all a weasel is, is a member of the genus Mustela - as such, the Siberian Weasel represents a transitional form between the weasel/stoat clade, which arose in Europe as far as can be determined, and the mink/polecat clade, which arose in Northern Asia.

The interesting point is that the Long-tailed Weasel, Amazon Weasel and Columbian Weasel, despite all being closer in morphology to the weasel clade - and in the case of the latter taxon being the second smallest carnivoran species - are nested within the mink/polecat clade.