When one thinks of cryptids in New Jersey, most people go no further than the Jersey Devil, which is so ubiquitous that it even lent its name to an unofficial record by the State's most lucrative cultural export - Bruce Springsteen.However, now there is another one, albeit smaller. I have always been interested in cryptic mustelids, and so was particularly interested in this story, which was sent to us by our Pennsylvania & Maryland rep, Andrew Gable.
There is quite a bit of debate going on about its identity, with the two most common identities being mooted as a mink or a fisher. I personally think it is a sable, but over to you. What do you guys think?
http://centraljersey.com/articles/2009/12/09/the_princeton_packet/news/doc4b1d7da56ef78415048015.txt
It looks like a very big dog American mink.
ReplyDeleteCompare the head shape: http://img2.photographersdirect.com/img/11917/wm/pd1483312.jpg
This is a fisher from Massachusetts:
http://www.batguys.com/images/wildlifephotos/daylightfisher.jpg
Fishers have a broad skull and their coats are covered in banded hairs. As far as I know, they don't come in that solid chocolate color, although they can approach it.
Female fishers are about the same size as dog mink, but the male fishers are much larger. They can exceed 10 pounds in weight.
Here's a very dark brown fisher for comparison: http://www.hilltownsonline.com/Graphics/fisher4.jpg
Confusing these animals goes way back to colonial days. In the Maritimes and Maine, there was a reddish colored mink that lived by the ocean that was known as the sea mink, an entirely different species from the American mink. It was called a fishing cat, a water marten, or a "fyshe like a greyhound" (by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, I believe). When trappers went into the interior they trapped the larger species of marten, which the English may have thought was the same species. This may be the origin of the term fisher. Another (and more accepted theory) is that the French fur traders marketed fisher fur as fichet (polecat) fur. The English then took that term from the French as "fisher."
Although I have called the fisher a large marten, there is some evidence that fishers are more closely related to wolverines (or gluttons, as they are also known) and the tayra than it is to Eurasian martens. The same can be said for the American marten, which is a very beautiful animal: http://bss.sfsu.edu/holzman/courses/Fall%2003%20project/marten3.jpg
Here's a pet Russian sable, which is a Eurasian marten: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NA3pSUx4dw&feature=related
ReplyDeleteThat's about as dark as they get.
Sable really look like American martens.
So what you have is an unusually large American mink.
A video of a European mink (which is actually a polecat that looks like and behaves like a mink and can breed with European polecats and ferrets) and a screaming American mink: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoPKZYJ3JW0
ReplyDeleteI think it's a big American mink in the photo.