Sable

Name and taxonomy

Carl Linnaeus described the sable in 1758 as Mustela zibellina. It now sits in the genus Martes, the true martens, in the weasel family Mustelidae. The word sable comes from the Slavic name, sobol in Russian and sobol in Polish, and reached English through the fur trade. German took it as Zobel, French as zibeline, and Italian as zibellino. In heraldry, sable became the word for the colour black, after the darkest pelts.

The species varies a great deal in colour and size from place to place. Mammal Species of the World accepts 17 subspecies, but other authors count anywhere from 7 to 30. The Japanese sable, Martes zibellina brachyura, lives on Hokkaido and is listed apart as Data Deficient.

Evolution and relatives

Like other true martens, the sable belongs to a genus of about eight species spread across Europe, Asia and North America. Its closest relatives are the European pine marten, the American marten and the Japanese marten. Some authors have argued that all four belong to a single species. In the Ural Mountains the sable and the pine marten share the same forests and sometimes interbreed. The hybrid, called a kidus, is a little smaller than a sable, with coarser fur and a long bushy tail. Kiduses are usually sterile, though one female kidus is known to have bred with a pine marten.

Compared with the pine marten, the sable has a longer head, longer ears and a shorter tail. Its skull is larger and more robust, with more strongly arched cheekbones.

Appearance

Males measure 38 to 56 centimetres in head and body, and females 35 to 51. The tail adds 7.2 to 12 cm, about a third of the body length. Males weigh 0.88 to 1.8 kilograms and females 0.7 to 1.56 kg, so the sexes differ only slightly. Newborn cubs weigh 25 to 35 grams and measure 10 to 12 cm.

The fur is long and silky, and it ranges from pale greyish-brown to a brown so dark it looks black. The belly is paler than the back and the legs. A light patch on the throat may be grey, white or pale yellow. Japanese sables carry black on the legs and feet. The winter coat is longer and richer than the shorter, darker summer coat. Dense stiff hairs cover the soles of the feet, which probably helps on snow.

Habitat and range

The sable lives in dense taiga, in lowlands and in mountains, among spruce, pine, larch, birch and Siberian cedar. It prefers mature forest with big trees, a closed canopy and plenty of fallen logs. It avoids open ground and bare mountain tops. Dens sit among tree roots, under rocks, in hollow logs or in burrows several metres long. A burrow ends in a nest chamber lined with dry plants and shed fur.

The range once reached west to northern Scandinavia and Poland. Today it runs from the Urals across Siberia to Kamchatka and Sakhalin, and south into Mongolia, China, Korea and Hokkaido. In Russia the present range is largely the product of releases of 19,000 animals between 1940 and 1965. In China the species was once common but is now rare, and in North Korea it survives only in the high north-east.

A home range covers 4 to 30 square kilometres, depending on terrain and food. When food is short, a sable may travel 6 to 12 kilometres a day. GBIF holds records from 10 countries.

Diet and hunting

The sable is an omnivore, but small mammals make up most of its food. Voles are the main prey, and in one Siberian study red-backed voles gave about 52% of the summer biomass. It also takes mice, chipmunks, pikas, hares, small birds, eggs, reptiles, frogs and insects. In winter it may kill a young musk deer, a stoat or a weasel. It follows wolf and bear tracks to feed on the remains of their kills.

Plant food matters more than most people expect. Siberian pine seeds and bilberries turned up in about 79% of scats in the Yenisei taiga. In Hokkaido, fruit makes up about 68% of the winter diet. It eats slugs after it rubs them on the ground to remove the slime. It catches fish with its front paws. In hard weather it stores prey in the den and waits out the storm.

Behaviour and social life

The sable lives alone outside the breeding season. Male ranges overlap with female ranges but almost never with each other. In one Chinese study, male and female ranges overlapped by 62% on average. Each animal marks its ground with scent from glands on the belly. It is mostly a ground hunter, but it climbs trees and cliffs well.

Activity peaks at dawn and dusk. Radio-collared sables in China were nocturnal in winter and spring but active by day in summer and autumn. During a snowstorm, or when hunters are about, a sable may stay in its den for days. It moves in short bounds, and web sources say it can leap 3 to 4 metres to escape. Densities range from one animal per 1.5 square kilometres in pine forest to one per 25 in larch forest.

Communication and senses

The sable hunts by ear and by nose more than by eye. Its hearing is probably acute enough to find a vole under the snow. Scent from the belly glands marks a territory and tells other sables who passed. Males in the breeding season also urinate along shallow grooves they dig in the snow.

Courting pairs run, jump and make a rumbling sound like a cat. Like other martens, a sable probably chatters and hisses when it is cornered. Tame animals raised by hand are described as playful and curious.

Reproduction and life cycle

Mating runs from mid June to mid August, with the date shifting by region. Where sables are scarce, courtship is playful. Where male ranges overlap, males fight violently for females. A mating may last up to eight hours. The fertilised egg then stops growing and floats free in the uterus for about eight months.

Implantation follows in early spring, and the embryo grows for only 25 to 30 days. The whole pregnancy therefore lasts 250 to 300 days, and cubs arrive in April or May. A litter holds 1 to 7 cubs, most often 2 or 3. The female gives birth in a tree hollow lined with moss, leaves and dry grass. The male defends her territory and sometimes brings her food.

Cubs are born blind, with a thin coat of hair. Their eyes open at 30 to 36 days, and they leave the nest soon after. They are weaned at seven weeks, and the mother then feeds them regurgitated food. They breed at two to three years old. A wild sable rarely lives past 8 years, but fur-farm animals reach 15 and one lived to 18. About two thirds of a wild population is under two years old.

Predators and threats

Wolves, foxes, wolverines and lynx take sables on the ground. In the Far East, tigers do too. Eagles and large owls take them from the air. Sharp teeth and claws give a cornered sable a real defence.

People remain the main threat. Trapping in steel traps, as for mink, cut numbers hard in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Poaching rose again in the 1990s after the Soviet Union broke up, because wild Russian pelts fetch the highest prices. Habitat loss matters in China and Korea, where the species is now rare.

Population and conservation

The IUCN lists the sable as Least Concern, and it is common through most of its range. Only the Japanese subspecies is listed apart, as Data Deficient. No global count exists, but more than 25,000 animals are harvested every year. North Korea banned hunting in 1959 and lists the animal as Endangered in its own Red Data Book.

Russia created its first nature reserve at Barguzin on Lake Baikal in 1916, to save the local sables. A five-year hunting ban followed in 1935, then a licensed winter season. Fur farms took pressure off wild stocks, and releases of 19,000 animals refilled the taiga. Together these measures let the species reclaim most of its old range.

Relationship with humans

Sable fur has been prized since the early Middle Ages. It stays smooth stroked in any direction, which no other fur does. Hunters skinned the animal through the mouth, with no cut on the body, and kept the feet. Byzantine priests wore sable at their rituals. Henry VIII of England decreed that only nobles above the rank of viscount could wear it.

The hunt for sables drove the Russian conquest of Siberia. Ivan the Terrible demanded 30,000 pelts a year from the Kazan Tatars, who never sent more than a thousand. Imperial Russian fur companies produced 25,000 skins a year, and about 90% went to France and Germany. Sable hunting was sometimes a job for convicts exiled to Siberia. Old Believer villages kept their way of life under Soviet rule on condition that they handed over every sable skin.

Today sable trims collars, cuffs, hems and hats, including the shtreimel worn by some Hasidic Jews. Kolinsky sable paint brushes are not sable at all, but Siberian weasel hair. Fur farms raise sables and sometimes cross them with pine martens.

In culture and myth

In Russian fairy tales and epics, a sable-trimmed cloak or hat marks a prince or a rich merchant. Some Russian folk wedding songs use the sable as a figure for the groom. A 17th-century Russian diplomat called the sable the Golden Fleece of the ancient Greeks and Romans. In the Secret History of the Mongols, the parents of Genghis Khan's bride gave his mother a coat of sable furs. A boy found in a ruined Tatar camp was known as noble by his sable-lined silk jerkin.

In English tradition, Henry I received a wreath of black sable from the Bishop of Lincoln, worth £100 at the time. In European heraldry, sable is the name of the black tincture on a coat of arms. In Japanese tradition, a saying gives seven disguises to the fox, eight to the tanuki, and nine to the marten. In Mi'kmaq tradition, the marten, a close American relative, was the first animal to offer itself as food to people. Spirit-animal writers call the marten cunning and independent, but that is probably modern invention, not folklore.