A weaver's tail - the harvest mouse

Living in the grass is a tiny mouse: the tiny harvest mouse, with a wonderful scientific name that sounds like the title of a Charles Dickens Novel, Micromys minutus. It is the only British mammal with a prehensile tail. It uses its tail to hold on to the slender grass stems, at the tops of which it builds a nest.

Photo: Nick Fewing

These tiny mammals (just around 5 cm long) build a spherical nest of tightly woven grass at the top of tall grasses, in which the female will give birth to about six young.

In the fields, we see cows and horses brushing away flies with their tails; often they will stand side-by-side and end-to-end, and help each other. Two tails are better than one! In nature, tails are put to good use. Just as a tight-rope walker uses his pole for balance, so for some species, a tail provides balance. When running, a squirrel uses its tail as a counterbalance to help the squirrel steer and turn quickly, and the tail is used aerodynamically in flight. But many animals, such as monkeys and possums, use their tail as an extra limb. Their tail is prehensile; which means it is used to grab hold of things.

Harvest mice are weavers or basket makers. Shredding grass by pulling it through their teeth, they use the strips to weave a hollow nest, about the size of a tennis ball, about 50 – 100cm above the ground and secured to grass stems. Harvest mice can breed up to three times a year, and build a new nest each time. While the adults will abandon their young once they are weaned, the pups continue to use the nest.

Harvest mice have many predators: weasels, stoats, foxes, cats, owls, hawks, crows, even pheasants, but another danger is one nature had not foreseen - the combined harvester.

While the harvest mice are not a species in danger, they are nonetheless on the conservation list as their numbers are thought to be in decline.

So remember this, when next you are walking in a field. You are walking through the home of the harvest mouse.

Ray Noble is a chartered biologist and Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology

Prioritising people in nursing care.

There has been in recent years concern that care in the NHS has not been sufficiently 'patient centred', or responsive to the needs of the patient on a case basis. It has been felt in care that it as been the patient who has had to adapt to the regime of care, rather than the other way around. Putting patients at the centre of care means being responsive to their needs and supporting them through the process of health care delivery. Patients should not become identikit sausages in a production line. The nurses body, the Nursing and Midwifery Council has responded to this challenge with a revised code of practice reflection get changes in health and social care since the previous code was published in 2008. The Code describes the professional standards of practice and behaviour for nurses and midwives. Four themes describe what nurses and midwives are expected to do: prioritise people practise effectively preserve safety, and promote professionalism and trust. The

Ian Duncan-Smith says he wants to make those on benefits 'better people'!

By any account, the government's austerity strategy is utilitarian. It justifies its approach by the presumed potential ends. It's objective is to cut the deficit, but it has also adopted another objective which is specifically targeted. It seeks to drive people off benefits and 'back to work'. The two together are toxic to the poorest in society. Those least able to cope are the most affected by the cuts in benefits and the loss of services. It is the coupling of these two strategic aims that make their policies ethically questionable. For, by combining the two, slashing the value of benefits to make budget savings while also changing the benefits system, the highest burden falls on a specific group, those dependent on benefits. For the greater good of the majority, a minority group, those on benefits, are being sacrificed; sacrificed on the altar of austerity. And they are being sacrificed in part so that others may be spared. Utilitarian ethics considers the ba

The Thin End

Search This Blog