Traces of wild animals

The deer....

... is one of the greatest Italian mammals. In spite of the size they are fast and able to jump in extraordinary ways if scared, also on the more uneven land. Their preferred habitats are the great forests of conifers, where often they live in small mixed herds. They eat leaves, buds or grass, but during the winter, when the alimentary resources are insufficient, they do like even the bark of the trees. Only male deers have the horns, called “palchi”. Used as weapons in the fights during love seasons, they are distinctive elements inside of the hierarchy of males: the animal with the greatest horns is dominating on the others and gets the highest number of females. To the end of the summer the love season begins.

The wild boar

is an omnivore: from roots to small fruits and animals. Its teeth are witnesses of this particular adaptation. Its way to look for food is called “grufolare”, that is to turn up the land with the mouth. It moves usually in the night, while spends the diurnal hours in humid and  shadowed underbrush. The females, with the exception of the period of the reproduction, live in herds with the young smallest, while the adult males lead solitary life.

The porcupine

The porcupine is a rodent. Very known for the long stings that cover its body, the porcupine live in the forests and in the countryside. It eats a great variety of plants, tubers, roots. The porcupine lives in great dens underground; the most extraordinary thing is that often it shares the system of galleries with badgers or foxes. The main characteristic of the porcupine is the stings: hairs modified in the course of the evolution for the sake of defense. In danger case the porcupine raises all the stings thanks to a particular subcutaneous musculature and it makes them move fastly: this movement, thanks also to the particular structure of some stings, produces a threatening noise that has the function to scare possible predators.