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Eastern meadow voles are active year-round [8] [9] and day or night, with no clear 24-hour rhythm in many areas. [10] Most changes in activity are imposed by season, habitat, cover, temperature, and other factors. Eastern meadow voles have to eat frequently, and their active periods (every two to three hours) are associated with food digestion.
A young female vole usually first conceives around 105 days but can conceive as early as 77 days. A female will develop a vaginal plug after copulation which lasts for three days. [4] Gestation lasts 20–24 days with 1–4 litters produced per year, each with 1–5 young. [4] When a vole's partner dies, it is replaced by an unrelated individual.
Voles thrive on small plants yet, like shrews, they will eat dead animals and, like mice and rats, they can live on almost any nut or fruit. In addition, voles target plants more than most other small animals, making their presence evident. Voles readily girdle small trees and ground cover much like a porcupine. This girdling can easily kill ...
The oxytocin receptors of the female prairie vole brain are located more densely in the reward system, and have more receptors than other species, which causes 'addiction' to the social behavior. [ 10 ] [ 11 ] [ 12 ] In the male prairie vole, the gene for the vasopressin receptor has a longer segment, as opposed to the montane vole, which has a ...
The California vole is a medium-sized vole, and a typical member of its group in appearance. Males range from 152 to 196 mm (6.0 to 7.7 in) in head-body length, with a 42 to 58 mm (1.7 to 2.3 in) tail.
The voles try to prevent being caught by avoiding open areas of ground, by using tunnels and well-worn paths through the undergrowth. [6] The bank vole acts as a reservoir of infection for the Puumala virus, which can infect humans, causing a haemorrhagic fever known as nephropathia epidemica and, in extreme cases, even death. [11]
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Female field voles sometimes spontaneously move in the time gap between weaning one litter and producing the next, a phenomenon typical of this species. One of the causes of the large population swings that occur in the short-tailed field vole is the scramble competition which comes into play when the most desirable food plants are less ...