Wolverine

In the folklore the wolverine has always been pointed on as being a very greedy animal, killing for fun. In German its name is Vielfrass, meaning large eater and in French Gloutton, mening "the-greedy-one". Moreover, it has an rumour of being very agressive and dangerouse for humans. This is mostly due to the fact that the wolverine is little known and little studied. In a fact is is quite bad at hunting and there are no written material on that it has attact humans. The wolverine is more a "norcid hyena" living on dead animals that the wolf and lynx are leavning. The wolverine is very skilled if there is a lot of new fallen snow or if the is frozen crust on the snow which bears the wolverine but not the reindeer. In such occasions the wolverine can kill several reindeer at one place. This makes the wolverine enemy number one for reindeer keepers. Half of all killed reindeer used to be killed by wolverines, today most are killed by lynx and wolverine being the second. As the wolverine not is a good hunter in normal conditions it may leave a reindeer hurt and not be able to kill it. This makes many reindeer keepers very upset.

The wolverine lives in the tundra and taiga forests but it is not a common animal. It is very shy and needs kes large unhabitated areas or totally virgin nature. As mentieond its main food is reindeer winter time, summer time it is eating everything: smaller mammals, birds, roots, green plants, berries, bird eggs. As a squirrel it collects food for the winter. It digs it doen in snow or hide it among rocks as it cannot hunt regularly winter time. The wolverine can also kill elks and especially sheep in Norway. It usually follows the tracks of wolf, lynx, bear and fox in hope to eat some of theirs prey remains. The wolverine can be very agressive in protecting carrions. It has been seen how it takes carrions from a bear and even scear a bear away from its newly killed prey. In Europe there are only woverines in Norway, Sweden, Finland ans Russia. In Finland there are only about 100 wolverines. About 1500 lives in Russia and 400 in Sweden and Norway. An adult animal is about 10-25 kg and about 40 cm high, 70-80 cm long. The tale is 15-25 cm long.