Dormice - Today, on September 22nd, autumn begins according to the calendar. While we humans look forward to colourful leaves and cooler days with a cup of tea, dormice in the wild have already put on a good meal.

Insects and fatty tree fruits like hazelnuts, beechnuts, and acorns, as well as sugary raspberries and blackberries, were at the top of their menu. Now the native dormice – including the edible dormouse, the garden dormouse, the tree dormouse, and the hazel dormouse – are ready to say "goodnight." They spend up to seven months curled up in protected hiding places such as burrows, rock crevices, or tree stumps, sometimes even in abandoned bird nesting boxes.

All dormice are masters at conserving energy: For them, hibernation is a survival strategy, because during the cold season, there simply isn't enough food to remain active. In energy-saving mode, they drastically reduce their bodily functions, and their breathing and heart rate slow to a minimum. Garden dormice, for example, can lower their body temperature to -1 degrees Celsius, and their heart rate then beats only twice a minute. This is how the animals survive even the harsh winter months. "For hibernators, an undisturbed, safe place to retreat is vital," says Julia-Marie Battermann, conservationist at the German Wildlife Foundation. After all, dormice can theoretically live up to nine years in the wild. A few dormouse specimens even reach a record-breaking 13 years – a great age for such a small rodent!

Hiding places in old orchards, in brushwood piles, or in hedges in natural gardens are often used by dormice as shelter. Leaving piles of leaves or brushwood lying around and not trimming dense blackberry hedges creates important habitats for them. "Gardeners should be considerate when gardening now to avoid destroying nests or waking the animals. Dogs should also be strictly discouraged from rummaging under hedges or at tree roots for sleeping dormice," says Battermann. If nests are destroyed and the animals awakened, they have to laboriously restart their metabolism – a strenuous effort that consumes valuable energy reserves and can endanger their survival during the long autumn and winter.

Incidentally, dormice (Gliridae) are one of the oldest living rodent families. Fossil finds prove their age at more than 40 million years. "So, dormice were already climbing through vegetation at least 30 million years before our ancestors, the great apes, existed," says Battermann. Their strategy of spending the winter in this special state and thus bridging the long period without food has made them very successful. Today, however, other factors are affecting them: The fragmentation of the landscape, the decline in insect populations, the use of environmental toxins, and forest monocultures have led to the garden dormouse, for example, being classified as "critically endangered" on Germany's Red List of mammals. The German Wildlife Foundation is therefore committed to protecting the garden dormouse in the Harz Mountains of Saxony-Anhalt by using wildlife cameras to monitor the presence of the rare dormouse. "The goal is to improve the habitat for the garden dormouse in specific areas over the coming year so that they can find ample food and shelter and move safely along the planted forest edges to other habitats," explains Battermann.

Jenifer Calvi / Press Officer
German Wildlife Foundation
Lucy-Borchardt-Straße 2
20457 Hamburg
Phone +49 40 9707869-14
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
www.DeutscheWildtierStiftung.de

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