Out of all the animals out there, there are a whole bunch of them that are immensely cute.
Of course, we’ve got the popular choices such as dogs and cats, but little stoats are definitely contenders for cutest animals too.
Stoats is a more common name that is given, short-tailed weasels. Although some people also call them ermines.
Whatever you want to call them, stoats are absolutely adorable.
These cute little furry animals actually have quite the history.
Stoats can be found throughout the European, Asian, and North American continents, and you’ll even find these furry friends in Greenland and colder areas. A stoat population also lives in the Japanese Alps.
One place that they weren’t native to, is New Zealand.
They were actually introduced as a means to try and control rabbits, but that ended up being a bad idea. The ermines tend to eat hole-nesting birds, and the bird population in the country went down immensely after the stoat was first introduced.
Robert Fuller, a wildlife artist who lives in North Yorkshire, UK, has a couple of animals running around on his property.
In fact, there are plenty of wild animals that often visit or even reside in his backyard, including numerous owls, foxes, badgers, hedgehogs – and recently, even a couple of stoats joined the bunch.
Robert knows how to take care of them.
He also knows that entertainment is very important: that’s why he built a ‘jungle gym’ in the backyard with a trampoline and all.
The short-tailed weasels usually don’t interact much with the other animals and keep to their own, but once they spotted the trampoline that Robert installed, they just couldn’t possibly resist.
“I first noticed a stoat on the trampoline around 2015,” the man said in an interview with The Dodo. “It had been snowing and I followed the stoat’s pawprints all the way up to the trampoline and all over it, too!”
The man loves having ‘his’ animals around, and he even installed numerous network camera’s on his large property just to take a look at how these animals would react whenever he’s not there.
Of course, he also aimed one of the cameras towards the small trampoline.
The footage can only be described as heartwarmingly adorable.
“When I developed my camera set-up a few years later, the trampoline was a prime contender for a camera and I soon had exciting clips of stoats bouncing and having fun,” he mentioned. “The stoat kits seem to meet at the trampoline to play and have fun! They seem to like the texture of the material and use it for particularly bouncy playfights and stretching.”
Whether it’s just to bounce around or rest with the family, these stoats wouldn’t want to miss their trampoline for the world.
And the rest of the jungle gym actually turned out to be quite useful as well! The trampoline is used to sharpen the baby stoats’ skills, as they’ll definitely need a bit of acrobatics and technique for when they grow up.
Sometimes they even play games.
“The whole children’s climbing frame has been great for the kits to practice their hunting skills and even play a stoat version of hide-and-seek,” Robert concluded.
According to the wildlife artist, the family of stoats is definitely the most active in his backyard – although the other animals also visit and make use of the trampoline from time to time.
Robert absolutely loves the fact that the weasels feel right at home here – we suspect that the fun on the trampoline is just too hard to resist.
Be sure to check out the amazing footage in the video below.
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