American mink

Where does the American mink live?

Home: Banks of rivers, lakes and marshes with plenty of cover.

In the wild it lives in these countries: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Russia, Chile.

Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.

The short profile

Fully grown: 30-45 cm long, plus a 15-25 cm tail. It weighs about 1 kilograms. On the menu: meat.

The story behind it

A mink is built like a furry tube: long body, short legs, small ears and a tail about half as long as the rest. Its dense coat traps air and keeps the skin dry, so a mink can swim for hours and dive to about three metres after fish and crayfish. On land it hunts mice, water voles, frogs and birds, and it usually keeps several dens along one stretch of bank. Because mink fur was valuable, the animals were farmed in Europe, Russia and South America, and those that escaped built up wild populations. In places where water birds and voles had never met such a hunter, that has caused real damage, and the rarer European mink has lost ground to it.

Find it on the globe

American mink is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.