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Dance? I’d shimmy like a spaz in a revival tent!

skrjabingylus

Mesablue kindly dropped me this BBC video link, showing a stoat doing the charming Weasel Dance. They don’t dance on account of snow, though. YouTube turns up other examples, and I have seen two different captive stoats do the dance.

The usual romantic explanation for the dance is that it is intended to mesmerize prey. Stoat dances, rabbit goes what the fuck?, stoat bites his neck until he goes dead.

Or it could be the worms up their noses. Skrjabingylus nasicola. Lives in the gut of a snail. Mouse eats snail, weasel eats mouse and the worm — by a process that doesn’t bear thinking of — works its way up into the sinuses of the weasel. Up to 100% of the weasels in some areas are afflicted with Skrjabingylus. Eats holes in their little skulls, no lie (though I think the skulls in the picture are skunk).

Yeah. I’d dance.

Personally, though, I think they dance from the wild exuberance of being a stoat.

February 6, 2009 — 8:41 pm
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