Arctic hares can go the space. A member of Lepus arcticus in northern Canada has traveled farther than anybody knew doable.
BBYY, because the grownup feminine was identified, made a wild sprint of greater than 388 kilometers in 49 days — the longest distance ever recorded amongst hares, rabbits or some other kin — researchers report on-line December 22 in Ecology.
“To think that such a small animal living under such extreme conditions averaged about eight kilometers per day across seven weeks is truly astounding,” says Joel Berger, an ecologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins and a senior scientist on the Wildlife Conservation Society in Bronx, N.Y., who was not concerned within the examine.
Arctic hares — which weigh roughly the identical as home cats, about 4 kilograms — are fascinating prey for foxes and wolves on the tundra. Given the hares’ vital function within the Arctic meals net, mammalian ecologist Dominque Berteaux of the Université du Québec à Rimouski wished to know the way the animals transfer throughout the arid panorama.
In 2019, Berteaux and colleagues affixed satellite tv for pc monitoring collars on 25 hares captured close to the northern tip of Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, Canada. As the hares swiftly hopped away, the researchers had no thought the creatures have been starting a mind-blowing expedition throughout the tundra, Berteaux says. That’s as a result of hares and their kin, referred to as lagomorphs (SN: 3/8/58), sometimes spend their lives inside a single, acquainted territory the place meals is plentiful and straightforward to seek out.
The Arctic hares thumped that pattern, with most touring wherever between 113 and 310 kilometers. None got here near BBYY, who died of unknown causes a couple of month after reaching her remaining vacation spot.
For a hare to endure such a deadly journey, it should steadiness the necessity to discover meals with out changing into meals, says Dennis Murray, a terrestrial ecologist at Trent University in Peterborough, Canada, who wasn’t concerned within the work. That makes BBYY’s tour much more spectacular, he says.
Berteaux and colleagues hope knowledge from BBYY and the opposite hares may help inform conservation methods for the polar desert ecosystem. But even at this early stage, it’s thrilling to seek out “something unsuspected in an animal that we thought we knew quite well,” Berteaux says.