Posted by Janet Harriett on Apr.14, 2010

Photo Credit: Steve Hillebrand/ US Fish and Wildlife Service

Weasels have a reputation for being, well, weasely. Weasels are one of the few animals that are also a verb, which Merriam-Webster defines as “to evade an obligation, duty, or the like; renege” or “be ambiguous; mislead.” Weasel has also entered the popular lexicon as a noun to signify a sneaky person or informer.

The Online Etymology Dictionary attributes the origin of the verb “to weasel” as referring to the weasel’s ability to suck the contents out of an egg and to get in and out of small places. Interestingly, many of the other animal verbs - badger, skunk and ferret - are members of the mustelid family like weasels, and those words aren’t particularly positive, either.

Some of the weasel’s bad reputation may be misapplied guilt. While weasels do get into the henhouse occasionally when their preferred small rodent prey runs short, chickens are more likely to be killed by rats, which weasels eat. A weasel spotted near a henhouse that has been struck by rats may get blamed for the rat’s misdeed, even though the weasel tend to protect domestic poultry by hunting down more common predators.

Weasels and People

Most states classify weasels as a furbearing animal, meaning they are legal to trap for the commercial pelt trade. However, weasel fur - especially the brown summer fur - isn’t economically valuable (the weasel may differ on the question of its value) and weasels are rarely actively targeted for fur trapping. Most weasels that get into commercial traps aren’t the intended target. Most targeted weasel trapping is to rid an area of nuisance weasels. For this purpose, weasels may be live trapped and relocated.

Source

Dictionary.com, “weasel,” in Online Etymology Dictionary. Source location: Douglas Harper, Historian. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/weasel. Available: http://dictionary.reference.com. Accessed: April 05, 2010.

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Posted under Living, Nature and Environment.