Animal · Germany, France, Italy
Beech marten
Martes foina — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The beech marten is the wild animal most likely to be asleep above your head: in towns it dens almost entirely in buildings. That is truest in winter, when nothing outside keeps it warm.
Picture credit: M.zlinko (CC BY-SA 3.0) · ANRH (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the beech marten live?
Home: Rocky slopes, woodland and the roofs of towns.
In the wild it lives in these countries: Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, China.
Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.
The short profile
Fully grown: 38–59 cm long. It weighs about 1.6 kilograms. On the menu: both plants and meat.
The story behind it
Since the middle of the 1970s, beech martens have been doing something nobody has fully explained: they get into the engine bays of parked cars and cut through tubes and cables. They do not eat what they cut. The damage peaks in spring, when that year's young are out exploring and have not yet worked out which things in their world are food and which are not — a car is simply a warm dark box full of chewable objects. It is a habit that came with city life. A beech marten in the mountains sleeps in a crack in the rock; a beech marten in a town sleeps in an attic, behind a chimney or under roof tiles, and its hunting ground is gardens, courtyards and car parks. You will know it by the white bib on its throat, split into two points.
Find it on the globe
Beech marten 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.
Questions children ask
Why do martens chew car cables?
Nobody is sure, because they never eat what they cut. What is clear is the timing: the damage peaks in spring, when young martens are exploring and still testing what in their world is food.
Is that noise in the attic a marten?
It often is. In towns a beech marten dens almost entirely in buildings, and it is loudest at night, when it is awake and everyone else is not.
How do you tell a beech marten from a pine marten?
By the bib. A beech marten's throat patch is white and splits into two points; a pine marten's is one piece and yellowish. The beech marten is also the one that lives in towns.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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