Fisher Diet
The animals that a fisher preys upon reads like a who's who list of northern forests. Fishers are agile and fast, capable of climbing down trees headfirst with the aid of hind feet that they can rotate 180 degrees. Fishers will eat squirrels, shrews, grouse, rabbits and snowshoe hares depending on how abundant they are. Raccoons, martens, and even small deer sometimes fall prey to the fisher. Fishers have even been documented killing lynx in Maine so they are obviously incredibly fearsome predators. If a fisher finds any of these animals off-guard, they have almost no chance of escape. The only chance for survival for a squirrel or rabbit that encounters a fisher is that it's within its home area.
Slow and lumbering, armed with thousands of barbed quills, porcupines are one of the ideal snacks for a fisher. The fisher has become quite adept at killing porcupines and utilizes a very unique, yet gruesome method. When a fisher encounters a porcupine it will circle it, dashing in and out very quickly while making repeated bites to the face, until the porcupine bleeds to death. Sometimes when a porcupine flees by climbing a tree, the fisher will follow it and force it off a high branch. When the porcupine falls and hits the ground it is often injured or impaled on its own quills and the fisher will then go to work feasting on this corpulent meal. Fishers will often receive numerous quills to various parts of their bodies as a result of these encounters however they seem to have a better resistance to this type of damage than other animals. Fishers have been found in good health with porcupine quills still imbedded in their lungs and livers which may be attributed to the anti-biotic properties of the quills. It all comes down to a trade-off between whether the fisher wants a tough chase with catching a fast animal such as a squirrel or hare, or possibly walking away with a face full of porcupine quills and a sweet juicy lunch.
Acknowledgements
- Porcupine and Fisher Painting
- By Consie Powell from Kays and Wilson's Mammals of North America
- © Princeton University Press (2002)
