Behaviour
Water voles are expert swimmers and divers. They do not usually live in large groups. Adult water voles each have their own territories, which they mark with fecal latrines located either near the nest, burrow and favoured water's edge platforms where voles leave or enter the water. Latrines are known to be a good survey indicator of this species, and can be used to gauge abundance of animals. They also scent-mark by using a secretion from their bodies (a flank gland), although this is not normally detectable during a field survey. They may attack if their territory is invaded by another water vole.
Read more about this topic: European Water Vole
Famous quotes containing the word behaviour:
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—Frances Burney (1752–1840)
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—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)
“The methodological advice to interpret in a way that optimizes agreement should not be conceived as resting on a charitable assumption about human intelligence that might turn out to be false. If we cannot find a way to interpret the utterances and other behaviour of a creature as revealing a set of beliefs largely consistent and true by our standards, we have no reason to count that creature as rational, as having beliefs, or as saying anything.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)