Musteloidea: A Super Family of Adorable Carnivores

Mustelids are some of the most heartwarming creatures on the planet. Mustelidae contains 8 subfamilies and roughly 60 species including weasels, martens, otters, badgers and the wolverine. It is the largest family within the order Carnivora and is part of Musteloidea, a superfamily of weasels that also contains the red panda, raccoons and skunks. In this guide, we’ll explore each subfamily, where they’re located and the species found therein.

More rabbit holes to dive into!

00:42 Weasels, Ferrets, Mink... | Mustelinae
02:16 Otters | Lutrinae
03:44 Grisons, Polecats & Weasels | Ictonychinae
04:44 Wolverine, Martens... | Guloninae
05:55 Ferret badgers | Helictidinae
06:14 Badgers & Hog Badgers | Melinae
07:18 Honey Badger | Mellivorinae
08:05 American Badger | Taxidiinae
09:06 Racoons, Olingos, Coatis... | Procyonidae
10:32 Red Pandas | Ailuridae
11:20 Skunks | Mephitidae

Media & Attribution

Music
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Sources & Further Reading
Listed below are the sources used to create the video.

Animal Diversity
Wikipedia
Encyclopedia Britannica
Info relating to the cladograms
Mustelid Genera & Relationship to Seals
Type specimens
The winter colour change of weasels
Why do sea otters float on their backs?
Difference between the greater and lesser grison
The wolverine and the largest mustelids
Can wolverines kill moose?
What do badgers eat?
European Badger
Hog badger range
Honey Badger venom resistance
American badger behaviour and characteristics
American badger life cycle
The red panda
Red panda’s Nepali name
Skunk facts!

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Videos Exploring The Animal Kingdom & The Natural World

Educational content about the most fascinating elements of our planet and the study surrounding them. Current content includes:

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#textbooktravel #animals #weasel

[robertpowell]

Always been a fan of Mustelids. The definition of what it means to be cute and deadly.

[goatcat]

I feel the majority of mustelids fall into the vibe of "bear in miniature" or just "angry tube with legs and teeth"

and I love them for that

[beachchaos]

Just wanted to say thank you for making these. As someone very into phylogeny it's amazing to learn more about animals :)

[xlord]

these are so well structured, thanks for the great work!
the last picture always gets me. "wait a minute, that's not a mustelid, that's a pronghorn!"

[natashas]

Lovely video, very informative and engaging! The animal at 2:16 is actually a domestic ferret, black footed ferrets look a bit different. A lot of people get them confused

[Andrea-rwtf]

These are some of my favorite animals, almost all of them are cute and ferocious!

[gravel]

Your channel has wonderful contents, good narration and amazing visuals. I hope your channel grows bigger.

[benmcreynolds]

Martins are without a doubt my favorite species of animal In all the world. I absolutely love them. The sable, Fisher, etc. Just amazing creatures. I was assigned a common otter as my "spirit animal" but I definitely also feel very drawn to Martins.

[ottiliaottilia]

Was hoping you would mention wolverine in some video! We have them here in Sweden but theyre rare to see. I have seen one once running across the road. They're litterally HUGE compared to what size they actually are. I think its the fur and big paws. Very cool animals.

[skeksis]

8:36 stopped me in my tracks, the loaf, the girth, absolute unit

[ll]

Ive been waiting for an animal channel like this my whole life ❤️

[MrSomeone]

Id love to see a video on birds or a family of plants in the future. Keep up the great work!

[krioswordsmith]

thanks guys, i love this one. i've always liked Mustelids and felt they are very overlooked as far as carnivores go.

[evandean]

Best video yet! Great images, the contrast pics were especially fun. I do wish you'd included Bassariscus as well, though. Ringtails are so cool to me when I spot one here in CA.

[duffal]

If you keep these types of videos up, you’ll be at 100k subs in no time. Great video

[TRquiet]

10:47 Okay, your graphics guy is having a little too much fun. And I love it.

[saltedluke]

Always thought that mongooses where part of the weasel super family since they share similar physical characteristics. Awesome video btw!

[geoffreydonaldson]

Great video: informative, thorough, but great flow. I’ve seen many of these creatures in the wild, or the zoo, or in media—but now I know how they’re related. Yay!

I was in a helicopter flying over an ice field in the big Coast Mountains of British Columbia. Making a bee-line at about 10, 000 feet from the head of one inlet (or fjord) to another, miles and miles of flat white snow and ice maybe a hundred feet below us at about 130mph. A set of animal tracks converges with our flight path and we follow it for miles. “What kind of animal would come all the way up here? Is it lost or something? There’s no food, there’s no nothing...” The pilot says, no, it’s a wolverine (it looked like a heavy animal made the tracks—I would have guessed a lost bear cub maybe). I asked the same question more specifically and he said, “it’s changing valleys, can run virtually all day practically nonstop, incredible strength and stamina...” “Wow!” I said and suddenly we see it up ahead, slow down just a bit (it’s illegal to hover over wildlife without a permit or make them run and chase them) and, sure enough, it’s a huge wolverine in winter coat running as fast as he (we assumed ‘he’ by its size) could go in a perfectly straight line. We were miles from anywhere that wasn’t ice. “WoW!!”

So we carry on, do want we have to do on the other side of the field and, on our way back, saw its tracks veer off to a pocket valley, so we took a little detour, see where it went (pocket valleys are so cool, big trees —no wind—with a lake way down at the bottom), then we saw it’s tracks come out again and resume their course across the ice field—I mean, it was many, many miles it ran whilst we spent an hour or so before coming back. Amazing! “He was just checking it out...always on the go, eat everything, fear nothing—even grizzlies are scared of ‘em.” We could see where he stopped at the edge of the valley, listened and sniffed before electing to push on across the glaciers. Biggest wolverine I ever saw.

[AM]

Love your videos man. So well done and informative. Can't wait to see your channel grow big.

[mikesaunders]

A very informative overview of a large and interesting family.