Potbelly

At the bottom of the lake between the entrances to the two adjacent holes paved trench cut through the entire thickness of silt (up to a sandy base). Summer Desman live alone, couples or families, and in winter in a burrow can live up to 12-13 animals of different sex and age, close relatives and former neighbors. Each animal or flock, but the basic, long-occupied burrows, has time to visit holes, spaced 25-30 m apart. This distance muskrat swims along the connecting trench for the normal duration of its stay under water – for 1 minute. Muskrat feeds sedentary inhabitants freshwaters: summer – gastropods, insect larvae (especially caddis and beetle ), leeches, and in winter a significant increment up small fish and plant food (starchy rhizomes Potbelly, and tubers of arrowhead).

When the animal moves along the trench bottom, it gradually recruited into the lungs exhale the air in the form of a string of small bubbles. Bubbles come out well from the fur cover under water pressure. In winter, the air bubbles accumulate over a trench under the lower surface of the ice and eventually freeze in it in the form of cavities of different sizes. Frost over the trench becomes porous and fragile. Due to air bubbles under the ice, over bottom trenches Desman, the conditions better aeration, attract molluscs, leeches and small fish. Attracting effect on them has, apparently, and smelling the musky trail along the trench. Muskrat is not torn on the bottom the reservoir in search of food, but moves only on the system of their trenches, to which its victims are actively contracted.