Cool Critters: Huggable-looking marten is a natural born killer - with good reason

This long, slender creature might be the cutest killer in Washington state.

Weighing little more than an apple, the marten has a pointy face with a small button nose, curious eyes and kitty-like ears. Covered in soft, brown fur with a pale yellow patch on the throat, it bounds through snow drifts and zips up and down trees with the agility of a squirrel.

But beneath the marten’s wide-eyed and spunky cuteness is a fierce predator that goes on killing sprees and can take down animal prey much larger than itself.

While most predators hunt larger prey in groups to increase success and safety, the marten is a solitary hunter, writes zoologist Carolyn M. King in “The National History of Weasels and Stoats.” That this small-sized carnivore takes down animals twice its size on its own is “astonishingly bold,” King says.

What drives this bold behavior? Like all of us, the marten is just trying to survive. And survival for this small-sized carnivore is no easy feat – especially in winter, according to biologist Lindsay Welfelt of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“Their long, thin body shape means they lose heat easily and have a very high metabolism, which requires they eat frequently,” Welfelt explained.

Consequently, they must kill lots of prey, ranging from mice and voles to marmots and snowshoe hares. In winter, this often means tunneling through deep snow and competing for food against much larger predators like bobcats, cougars, coyotes and wolves. Researchers have also found that martens sometimes kill far more prey than they can eat in one sitting and then bury the carcasses to enjoy during cold snaps.

Although martens live in forested areas throughout Washington and Idaho, chances are, most of us couldn’t tell a marten from a fisher, a stoat or a long-tailed weasel.

“Not many people know about the marten and even fewer have ever seen one,” Welfelt said. Or, some people see them without ever realizing it, she added. That small, brownish flash of movement along a tree branch? Probably just a squirrel. Except it’s not.

Washington is home to two marten species: the Pacific marten and American marten, both of which can be found in forest-clad parts of Eastern Washington. Also, a small, isolated population of coastal Pacific martens live on the Olympic Peninsula.

Martens are members of the Mustelid or weasel family, which include otters, mink, weasels, badgers and wolverines. And talk about being a weasel of a different stripe. Not only are they more secretive and tree-loving than their relatives, they’re so fast-moving and quick-witted that they’ve been known to reach in and steal meat from research traps.

Nonetheless, through persistent field research, scientists like Welfelt know why a sweet-looking mammal with a long, thin torso and legs as short as a dachshund’s is such a ferocious predator: A revved-up metabolism makes it constantly hungry.

The marten, with its small size, secretive nature and nimble quickness, is notoriously challenging to study. Nonetheless, “I feel fortunate to have spent a lot of time around them,” Welfelt said. “Their stunning coats and feisty attitude make them a joy to view in the wild.”