Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
could give off a musky scent and had a long, naked tail a bit like that of a Norway rat. Put these two ob-
servations—musk and rat—together and they sounded quite similar to musquash, yet seemed to make
perfectsense. Voilà, Monsieur Muskrat!
As already noted, the muskrat looks much like a small beaver except for its tail, which is nothing
like the beaver's except that it's hairless. While the beaver's tail is rounded and relatively short, very
wide, and flattened top to bottom, the muskrat's is long, quite slender, and flattened from side to side.
The muskrat is also far smaller than the beaver. An adult varies from a foot and a half to a little over
two feet long from nose to tip of tail. This total length is deceptive, however, for the long tail consumes
nearly 40 percent of it; as a result, adult muskrats weigh only two to four pounds.
Aside from their fondness for water, muskrats lead very different lives from beavers. For one thing,
the muskrat's habitat requirements are far less rigid than those of the beaver. Since they don't construct
dams, muskrats have no need of suitable dam sites, or for materials for constructing dams. They need
very little in the way of water; anything from a huge lake or river to a drainage ditch or farm pond suits
this notably unfussy rodent. In fact, muskrats frequently utilize beaver ponds for their habitat, and the
two species seem to coexist quite peaceably.
Muskrats also eat a much wider variety of foods than beavers. Whereas beavers are exclusively ve-
getarian, muskrats feed extensively on freshwater mussels, frogs, crayfish, and similar aquatic creatures
whenever these are available. Now and then they even manage to catch a slow or unwary fish. However,
their main diet is plant material; cattails (both the shoots and tubers), water lilies, duckweed, pickerel
weed, assorted other pond weeds, bulrushes, sweet flag, and a variety of reeds and sedges are prime
muskrat food.
Nor is the muskrat constrained by the need for the inner bark of trees that so often forces the beaver
to abandon a colony denuded of surrounding trees and brush. No doubt the muskrat's great adaptabil-
ity in matters of food and habitat accounts for its nearly ubiquitous presence throughout most of North
America, from the subarctic to the Gulf of Mexico.
Often the presence of beavers can be detected by gnawed pieces of wood that have floated far down-
stream from a colony. The first signs of the muskrat's presence are likely to be a bit more subtle. These
frequently take the form of cut pieces of cattails and other aquatic plants, floating about or lodged on
the shoreline, and these are easily overlooked except by the careful observer. Far more obvious is the
sight of some aquatic greenery mysteriously moving across the surface of the water. In the latter case,
closer inspection reveals that it's a sort of wildlife version of Birnam Wood coming to high Dunsin-
ane—a muskrat, almost totally submerged, propelling a bunch of cut vegetation to a preferred feeding
site.
These favorite feeding spots vary widely. They may be flat rocks, logs, stumps, matted vegetation,
or a composite of trampled mud and reeds. Often a heap of discarded mussel shells or the remains of a
number of crayfish announce the location as a choice dining spot for the resident muskrat.
