Their short legs have five small-clawed toes on each foot. Weasels travel with a loping gait, stopping occasionally to sit on their haunches or stand on their back legs to look around. Weasels are consummate predators. Their senses of sight, smell and hearing are acute, their hunting instinct is keen, and they are active, aggressive and quick. They kill and consume a wide variety of prey, including animals larger than themselves.
Small rodents form the bulk of most weasels' diets.
Although mainly nocturnal, weasels may hunt during the day. They find prey mainly by scent, darting in and out of rodent burrows, checking brushpiles and rock crevices. A weasel has a fast metabolism and must eat more food in proportion to its body weight than other mammals of similar size. Secretive and wary, weasels are difficult to study in nature, and many gaps remain in our knowledge of their reproduction. About 25 days later, young are born.