Ermine
Amazing fact
An ermine hunts using clues such as the scent and sounds of its prey.
University of Michigan Animal Diversity Web
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An illustration based on the real animal.
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An ermine hunts using clues such as the scent and sounds of its prey.
THE REAL WORLD
The real Ermine
- Scientific name
- Mustela erminea
- Japanese name
- オコジョ
- Group
- Land mammals
- Class
- Mammalia
- Order
- Carnivora
- Family
- Mustelidae
- Genus
- Mustela
This page covers the ermine as a species; those in central and northern Honshu are treated as a subspecies found nowhere but Honshu.
A member of the weasel family, it lives widely across the northern parts of Eurasia and North America.
In summer its back is brown and its belly white; in winter its whole body turns white. The tip of its tail is black.
It mainly eats mice, moles and other small mammals, and sometimes catches hares bigger than itself.
How the Ermine lives
It hunts mainly at night. It moves in a zigzag series of leaps, investigating holes and crevices. It caches food left over from its meals. In the spring breeding season, it makes nests in places such as tree hollows and gaps between rocks.
University of Michigan Animal Diversity Web岐阜県Basic data
- Size
- 170–330 mm
- Weight
- 25–116 g
- Lifespan
- up to 7 years in the wild
- Active
- At night (nocturnal)
Where the Ermine has been recorded
Records: GBIF.org (CC0 and CC BY 4.0 records, retrieved 2026-11-07). Map: Natural EarthSee the records on GBIF
Watch wild animals from a distance. Do not touch or feed them, and take care of the places where they live.
Names around the world
- 日本語
- オコジョ
- 简体中文
- 白鼬
- 繁體中文
- 白鼬
- 한국어
- 북방족제비
- Español
- Armiño
- Français
- Hermine d'Europe
- Deutsch
- Hermelin
- Português (Brasil)
- Arminho
- Italiano
- Ermellino
- العربية
- قاقم
- Bahasa Indonesia
- Cerpelai ekor-pendek
- Tiếng Việt
- Chồn ermine
- Русский
- Горностай
- Türkçe
- Kakım
- ไทย
- เออร์มิน
Names come from Wikidata and iNaturalist records. Where a language has no recorded name, we use the scientific name.
Sources and how we check
- 岐阜県 — オコジョChecked: 2026-11-03
- University of Michigan Animal Diversity Web — Mustela ermineaChecked: 2026-11-03
We check each fact against its source. The illustrations simplify how the real animal looks.
The classification (class, order, family, genus) follows Wikidata records, checked against GBIF. Classifications can change as research goes on.
The basic data are the values given in each source. They vary with how the animal is measured, whether it is male or female, and whether it lives in the wild or in captivity.
This page was translated from the original Japanese with the help of AI.
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