The zoo in Minnesota has had the first litter of fisher kits for ages, and I’m not surprised everyone there are celebrating. As you can see from the photo, they look very much like mustelid babies (surprise surprise ) but they also look surprisingly like the little mink baby that was found which I wrote about, don’t you think?

Did you know fishers were one of the few animals that could kill a porcupine? Apparently they are pretty good at flipping the porcupines over onto their backs and then killing them by attacking their stomachs. However not all fishers get away with that and several do die from the porcupine’s quills.

They’re closely related to the pine marten, but much bigger, and no one really knows why they were called fishers as they don’t seem to have any interest in fish!!

This was a really interesting article about fishers and what I liked most is that the writer did ackowledge that these poor creatures are regularly villified because they are “predators”.

What are animals supposed to do when they are hungry? Go to McDonald’s???

By K.C. MYERS

staff writer

July 31, 2007

WEST BARNSTABLE — They look nothing like cats and they don’t fish, that much is apparent from a close-up look at the two fishers now being rehabilitated at the Cape Wildlife Center.