Voles 101

I feel the need to publish something new on rodents, and with no time to produce anything lengthy or all that complex, here are brief thoughts on one of my favourite rodent groups: voles! Caption: voles alive! At left, a Common vole M. arvalis I encountered in rocky scrub at Lepe Beach, southern England. At right, Lusitanian pine vole M. lusitanicus, an Iberian endemic. Images: Darren Naish; José Ramón Pato Vicente, CC BY-SA. 2.5 (original here). Voles (Arvicolinae or Arvicolidae), as a generalisation, are mostly small (on average, 10-11 cm long, with a tail of 3-4 cm), blunt-headed, short-tailed, herbivorous muroids. They’re predominantly animals of Northern Hemisphere forest floors, grasslands, steppes and rocky places, many constructing near-surface tunnels and burrows. Bog and marsh dwellers, and amphibious species, are part of the group too: the unusually large and long-tailed muskrats (Ondatra) are voles, as are the cold-adapted, tundra-dwelling lemmings (the subgroup Lemmini).…