What Do Stoats Eat? Rabbits, Voles and the Stoat Dance

The main foods in a stoat’s diet

The stoat is a specialist in small mammals, but it is also an opportunist that will try almost anything it can catch. What it eats depends heavily on where it lives and what is common that year.

In mainland Europe, water voles form a large part of the diet. In Russia and Central Asia stoats take hamsters, pikas and other burrowing rodents, which they chase through their tunnels. In the Arctic, lemmings are the key prey, and stoat numbers rise and fall with lemming cycles.

Do stoats eat rabbits?

In Britain the European rabbit is one of the most important foods for stoats. When the disease myxomatosis wiped out most British rabbits in the 1950s, stoat numbers fell sharply too, and they recovered as rabbit numbers rose again.

An adult rabbit weighs roughly 1.2–2 kg (2.6–4.4 lb), several times more than even a large male stoat. The stoat grabs the rabbit by the back of the neck and wraps its body around it. Its canine teeth are short, so large prey often dies of shock rather than from the bite alone. Males, which are much larger than females, take rabbits more often, while females rely more on voles and mice.

Females, males and hunting in tunnels

The size difference between the sexes shapes what each eats. Females are small and slim enough to follow voles and mice deep into burrows and under the snow. Males are too big to go as far into narrow tunnels and spend more time hunting larger prey above ground.

In winter, stoats hunt in the runways that voles and lemmings make under the snow, where the prey is hidden from most other predators. The stoat’s long, narrow body is ideal for this, but it also makes the animal lose heat quickly, which is one reason it needs so much food.

How stoats hunt

A hunting stoat moves in fast, zigzag bounds, checking every hole, crevice, tussock and wall cavity it passes. It relies mainly on smell and hearing to find hidden prey and often stands up on its hind legs to look around. Once it has found prey, it moves in quickly and bites the back of the head or neck.

Stoats climb trees well and raid birds’ nests, including nest boxes. They also swim and will cross streams and small rivers to reach new hunting grounds.

When food is abundant, a stoat may kill more than it can eat at once. It carries the surplus to its den or to a hidden cache and returns to eat it later, an important safety net in bad weather.

What is the stoat dance?

The “stoat dance” or “weasel war dance” is a burst of wild leaps, twists, rolls and somersaults, sometimes performed close to rabbits. Rabbits occasionally seem to watch the display, and old country stories claim the stoat uses it to hypnotize its prey before striking.

There is no scientific evidence for hypnosis. Several other explanations have been suggested:

• Play or excitement. Young stoats in particular play and wrestle, and dancing may simply be high energy before or after a hunt.
• Parasite irritation. A parasitic worm, Skrjabingylus nasicola, infects the sinuses of many stoats and damages the bone around the nose. Some biologists think the pain or irritation may cause sudden fits of jumping.
• Distraction. A moving, unpredictable animal may confuse prey long enough for the stoat to get closer, even if the rabbit is not “mesmerized”.

The dance has been filmed many times, but it is still not clear which explanation is correct, and different dances may have different causes.

How much do stoats eat?

A stoat eats about 50 g (1.8 oz) of food a day, around a quarter of its body weight. That is roughly two or three voles. Small predators with long, thin bodies have a high surface area for their size and lose heat quickly, so they need a lot of energy relative to their weight. Stoats cannot store much body fat either, because extra weight would make it harder to chase prey into burrows.

This high demand is why stoats are active by both day and night and hunt in many short sessions rather than a few long ones.

Stoats as invasive predators

Where stoats have been introduced, their broad diet can do great harm. In New Zealand, where native birds evolved without small mammal predators, stoats eat large numbers of birds and eggs, including kiwi chicks. The story is told in why are stoats a problem in New Zealand. To compare the stoat’s diet with that of its smaller cousin, see what do weasels eat.