Well, I’ve seen cats and rabbits on baseball fields, but never a pine marten on a football pitch. The Torygraph reports on an incident last Sunday:
A Swiss League match between FC Thun and Zurich was disrupted after a pine marten escaped onto the pitch on Sunday and evaded capture for over five minutes.
The marten, which is similar to a weasel, appeared at one point to have be caught Zurich defender Loris Benito.
But Benito was bitten for his troubles and it managed to escape again.
Martens are known for their sharp teeth which are usually used to eat birds, berries and the occasional garden hose.
So it was up to Zurich goalkeeper Davide Da Costa, armed with his gloves, to pick up the marten.
Here’s the video:
Some biology: the European pine marten (Martes martes) is a mustelid widespread throughout Europe, but declining (and protected) in Britain. Those readers who dissed the gray squirrel should know that the pine marten is thought to be responsible for decimating the gray squirrel and leaving the red squirrels pretty much alone, possibly because the gray spends more time on the ground,
The lovely beast:
Here’s a BBC report on breeding them; as you can see, they’re extremely rare outside Scotland. Have any readers ever seen one? (There’s a North American species, too: Martes americana, and I wonder if it’s really a different species from the European one.)
You can see more of them here.
Looks more like a Beech Marten to me – Martes foina
Even men with steel hearts love to see a dog on the pitch.
Not sure if it applies to pine martens though.
Martes foina, the stone marten, is an established urban adapter of a carnivore – probably more likely than a pine marten which really don’t like built up areas. I agree with Domenic.
They also eat bats. My chiropterologist friend loves them for it. 🙂
Martes foina indeed. As used to populated area as it might be, this particular individual looks a bit lost on this soccer field!
I remember on a visit to Germany or Switzerland seeing a shop window where they advertised something to deter them from chewing through bits of a car engine wiring. I thought it bizarre but my friend assured me that they do.
I had a friend who worked on a fur farm in norther Jutland near Aalborg & he had a pine marten someone had caught. Gorgeous but should not have been kept. He is no longer a fur farmer & I think the farm closed. It seems a cruel trade – foxes in tiny cages, mink in even tinier cages. All to feed fashion. One thing to eat an animal & use its hide, it seems to me, another to keep it merely for its fur.
I have heard similar tales from ship electricians about cats. Now that their anti-rat habits are not required, they are generally unpopular with the sparkies. Officers may have their own opinions, but the sparkies are unanimous on this point (those I’ve met).
Our new kitten Chairman Miaow, has chewed through about $300 worth of cables since his advent.
No sparks I hope!
My wife had a guinea pig in Russia with similar shocking habits. And an almost religious insistence on sticking to those habits despite the singed whiskers and sparks.
The Peruvians have good uses for Guinea pigs.
Beech martens are common in Germany and often invade house roof spaces. My mother in law lives in Germany and has experienced this and it is quite impressive the mess they make. They also do have a predilection for chewing cables on cars and my own car has been rendered undrivable in this way leading us (after repairs) to buy the product mentioned. We have not had the same problem recur but whether this is down to luck or to the effectiveness of the product I can’t say.
Incidentally beech marten is the usual English name for Martes foina Stone Marten is a literal translation of the German name Steinmarder. In French it is known as la fouine.
The whiteness of the throat/chest of the animal in the clip suggests beech marten rather than pine marten which has a yellowish tinge to the chest and throat.
Martens are extremely cute. But the cute furballs can also be very annoying. It seems that many of them like to chew on rubber.
So if you live in an area with many martens, you might experience problems starting up your car in the morning when an overnight visitor has been working on the cables under the hood.
I was wondering about the identification. It did look like a Martes foina. If anyone would know, it is the readers of this bwebsitelog. One reason I enjoy the comments as much as the posts.
Quite common here in Switzerland, I see them often at night in town. And the birds they enjoy unfortunately occasionally include some of my chickens. They can do quite a bit of damage if they manage to enter the coop, killing everything in sight.
Do they compete with foxes & does this mean there is a better balance of predators, or are they after different prey?
As far as I know, Martes foina and Vulpes vulpes are pretty much equally opportunistic as far as diet is concerned, and eat pretty much the same things and will go anywhere looking for food. One thing I know for certain is they both rather like my chickens (as does the occasional peregrine falcon). Martes martes will on the other hand stick predominantly to wooded areas. Martens of course are excellent climbers and look for food on trees, something Martes martes in particular is rather good at doing. Not sure about the better balance of predators, although it sounds plausible. For what it’s worth, judging from footprints in the snow, my garden is visited by foxes and martens (and badgers) in equal measure every night, all there to check whether I locked my chickens up.
What about polecats – Mustela putorius
a bit smaller but surely will attack chickens etc?
Any rabies in la Suisse? Apparently not, so picking up a disoriented carnivore wasn’t necessarily an act of madness.
Yes, to a good (90%+) probability.
Driving back from a lunch at Kylesku, via Laxford Bridge, towards our weekend base in Carbisdale Castle Youth Hostel ( £17/night, and worth a LOT more). I was driving so it was eyes-on-the-road, and there was this dark-brown thing “inch worming” across the road in front of me, which paused, looks at the car (white chest), and then resumed it’s journey before I could attract the wife’s attention to it and away from the scenery.
About here.
The area around Kylesku will be familiar to anyone in Britain, possibly Europe, from footage of new cars sweeping across graceful bridges in magnificent scenery. They must take weeks to shoot, between the driving rain and midge clouds.
The Highland Midge has vicious teeth (OK, a saw-tooth proboscis?) and does an effective job of protecting the wilder areas of Scotland from excessive tourism. I must remember to put out a dram for them next time I’m on the west coast.
There were sabre-toothed midges in the last glacial!
Last Tuesday? (I’m in Norway this week, trying to decipher “Wok Style Thai Kylling” as being either a menu item or news of a saucepan-murder in Bangkok.)
Risgrot, anyone?
🙂
As a forest ecologist I sometimes encounter them while out in the field here in Sweden. What struck me the first time I saw one was just how large they can appear, and that wonderful flash of yellow chest as they shoot up a nearby tree.
More likely the greys are larger portion noms and easier to catch. The martens here can climb trees as well or better than squirrels.
If they do, they ought to be on the increase in the UK, but I was under the impression that pine martens were more arborial…
Although I live in Scotland and less than 10 miles from the edge of the Grampians I have not been so fortunate as to come across a pine marten in the wild. They are very secretive creatures. However, the most secretive in Scotland is undoubtedly the Scottish Wildcat (Felis silvestris grampia) It is many years since I have seen a wildcat. They were quite common in the Angus Glens (Eastern edge of the Cairngorms) until relatively recently. Indeed, when I spent a couple of delightful late August seasons grouse beating when at University in the 60’s I spotted two. Apparently there have been no sightings in the Angus Glens for the last decade or so. Numbers of pure bred may have fallen well below 400: by some counts, considerably less.
What did the grouse ever do to you?
and continuing yesterday’s Douglas Adams theme, “unpleasantly like being drunk.”
Second year I stayed on a bit for the stalk. Not at all pleasant gutting deer on the hill. A stiff dram helped!
“Grrrrrrallloching!”, I’m told ; to be pronounced with a lot of flying spit. (NE Scotland, so “Doric” ; there are probably other words for it.)
Genetic evidence does show that the M. martes and M. americana are distinct species? What leads to the speculation that they are not?
The Bering land bridge I suppose – so many Eurasian species invaded North America in the Pleistocene, like brown (grizzly) bears, still they must have be separated long enough to become considered geneticall distinct.
A hockey goalie glove would be safer for handling that beast.
One of the North American variety used to greet me each time I walked up to high camp in the Big Horn Mountains here in Wyoming. Absolutely fearless, like all of this clan.
No one has metioned the greatest Pine Marten story of them all. A climber staying at a Canadian Hostel in Winter went to use the outhouse. No sooner had he taken his seat, than he felt a sharp pain in his most dependent nether part. It turns out that a Marten, who had been investigating the pit, climbed up the stalagmite of poo within and had a go at the dangling bits presenting themselves at the summit. There was significant blood loss and numerous stiches were required to close the wound.
Escaped from where? Do Swiss football clubs typically keep small mammals locked up on the sidelines? Are fans allowed to bring caged pets to the game? The real mystery is why this animal was anywhere near the pitch in the first place.
I don’t know where the stadium is but as suggested by posters above, it is a wild animal living in an urban environment, at least in central Europe. It is a strange beast as urban living seems to do little to its home range or behaviour, unlike other urban adapter carnivores like foxes, badgers and raccoons. It just lives in towns and villages in the same way it does in woods and fields. Houses provide resting and nesting places, bins and gardens provide food. Not as reliant on live food as is the pine marten it does well from eating human food and also town birds and rats. Strangely enough, in Iberia it is not urban at all, but sticks to wilder areas.
OK, but then I guess “escaped” in Switzerland means the opposite of what it means where I come from.
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So, do they have rabies in Switzerland?