Marten Totally Explained

Everything about Marten totally explained

ť For the Wiltshire village see Marten, Wiltshire. For the town in Bulgaria, see Marten, Bulgaria.

The Martens constitute the genus Martes within the subfamily Mustelinae, in family Mustelidae. They are slender, agile, animals, adapted to living in taigas, and are found in coniferous and northern deciduous forests across the northern hemisphere. They have bushy tails, and large paws with partially retractile claws. The fur varies from yellowish to dark brown, depending on the species, and, in many cases, is valued by fur trappers. Martens are carnivorous animals related to wolverines, minks and weasels. Their diet consists of squirrels, mice, rabbits, birds, fish, insects, and eggs, and that'll also eat fruit and nuts when these are readily available.
They are solitary animals, meeting only to breed in late spring or early summer. Litters of up to five blind and near-naked kits are born in early Spring. They are weaned after around two months, and leave the mother to fend for themselves at about three to four months of age.
Recent DNA research has shown that the genus Martes is in fact polyphyletic, placing Martes pennanti and Martes americana outside the genus and allying it with Eira and Gulo, to form a new New World clade. The genus first evolved up to seven million years ago, during the Pliocene.

Etymology

The word "marten" is of original Germanic origin. The Modern English "marten" comes from the Middle English "martryn", in turn derived from the Anglo-French "martrine" and Old French "martre". (Compare to French "martes".)
The word for marten in Macedonian, Serbian, Polish, Slovene as well as Croatian is "kuna" and this word has been adopted as the name of the national currency of Croatia.

Species

American Marten Martes americana

Newfoundland Pine Marten Martes americana atrata

Yellow-throated Marten Martes flavigula

Beech Marten Martes foina

Nilgiri Marten Martes gwatkinsii

Pine Marten Martes martes

Japanese Marten Martes melampus

Fisher Martes pennanti

Sable Martes zibellina

In Popular Culture

In Cornelia Funke's Inkworld trilogy, the character Dustfinger has two martens, Gwin and later, a younger, friendlier one named Jink.

In The Amber Spyglass, the third part of His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, Lyra Belacqua's dæmon finally settles on the form of a marten.Further Information

Get more info on 'Marten'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://marten.totallyexplained.com">Marten Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.