The hazel dormouse is native to northern Europe and Asia Minor. It is the only dormouse native to the British Isles, although the edible dormouse ("Glis glis") was accidentally introduced to the British Isles and now has an established population).
The locations in the UK where the hazel dormouse can be found is shown on the National Biodivestity Network website.
The hazel dormouse is a European Protected Species and is protected in the UK under the Wildlife and Countryside Act.
The hazel dormouse is the only small mammal in Britain to have a completely furry tail. It has golden-brown fur and large black eyes. It is a nocturnal creature and spends most of its waking hours looking for food in trees. It will make long trips in tree branches instead of coming down to the ground. This is to avoid danger.
In winter (early October), the hazel dormouse will hibernate in nests beneath the leaf litter on the forest floor. When it wakes up in spring (late April or early May), it builds nests out of honeysuckle bark, fresh leaves and grasses. If the weather is cold and wet and there is not much food, it saves energy by going into torpor (a temporary hibernation). It curls up into a ball and goes to sleep. The hazel dormouse spend a large amount of its life sleeping, either hibernating in winter or in torpor in summer.
Examination of hazelnuts may show a neat round hole in the shell. This shows that it has been opened by a small rodent like the dormouse, wood mouse, or bank vole. Other animals including squirrels or jays will either split the shell completely in half or make a jagged hole in it.
If you look closer at the hole, the inner rim of the hole will have toothmarks which are at an angle to the hole (if it has been made by a dormouse). The toothmarks are parallel with rough marks on the nut surface if a wood mouse made the hole. The bank vole leaves parallel grooves with no rough marks.
It feeds on a different foods which it can find in trees:
The hazel dormouse needs different food sources at different times of year to survive.
Edible dormouse
The edible dormouse or fat dormouse ("Glis glis") is a small dormouse and the only species in the genus Glis.
Fat dormice are the largest dormice in Europe. The ancient Romans used to breed them to be eaten (usually as a snack). This is the reason for the word "edible" in its name. The dormice were kept in large pits or in terra cotta containers (which were called "gliraria"), which were like modern hamster cages.
Wild edible dormice are still eaten in Slovenia, and trapping dormice is a Slovenian tradition. Using dormice for food and fur is mentioned in documents which were written in the 13th century. They also mention the use of dormouse fat as a medicine. Poor and hungry peasants would eat dormice during winter because it is a good protein source.
The edible dormouse lives in Europe. It was accidentally introduced to the town of Tring in England after some dormice escaped from the private collection of Lionel Walter Rothschild in 1902. The British edible dormouse population is about 10,000 and is found in a triangle between Beaconsfield, Aylesbury and Luton.
This animal is seen as a pest by some people. In the United Kingdom the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 does not allow some ways of killing them, and to remove the dormice from the area may require a license.
Bacillus subtilis
Bacillus subtilis is an endospore-forming bacterium.
It is the source of the antibiotic bacitracin. "Bacillus subtilis" is a gram positive, rod-shaped bacterium. It is a facultative anaerobe commonly found in soil, and is also found in the gut flora.
Leap year starting on Thursday
This article describes any leap year starting on Thursday. Some of these years are listed in the table below.
The ISO year has 53 weeks in this kind of year, and the ISO week 10 (which begins March 1) and all ISO weeks after are earlier than in other years.
Leap year starting on Saturday
This article describes any leap year starting on Saturday. Some of these years are listed in the table below.
Leap year starting on Monday
This article describes any leap year starting on Monday. Some of these years are listed in the table below.
Leap year starting on Wednesday
This article describes any leap year starting on Wednesday. Examples include 1908, 1936, 1964, 1992, 2020, 2048, and 2076 in the Gregorian calendar, or 2004 and 2032 in the obsolete Julian calendar.
Leap year starting on Sunday
This article describes any leap year starting on Sunday. Some of these years are listed in the table below. This is the only leap year with three occurrences of Friday the 13th, in January, April and July.
Leap year starting on Friday
This article describes any leap year starting on Friday. Some of these years are listed in the table below.
Marcelo Sosa
Marcelo Sosa (born 6 February 1978) is an Uruguayan football player. He has played for Uruguay national team.
177||18
8||0
39||0
2||0
35||0
261||18
!Total||27||2
Djalminha
Djalminha (born December 9, 1970) is a former Brazilian football player. He has played for the Brazilian national team.
77||29
11||4
138||38
10||2
5||1
241||74
!Total||14||5
Ophélie Bretnacher disappearance
The case of Ophélie Bretnacher's disappearance is a complex criminal and diplomatic case between France and Hungary, both members of the European Union.
Ophélie Bretnacher was a French student, at the "Reims Management School". With the European exchange programme, called "Erasmus Programme", she spent some time at the Corvinius University of Budapest. Ophélie Bretnacher disappeared in Budapest, Hungary on 4 December 2008. Coming out from a nightclub, the Portside of Cuba, she was tracked by the city video cameras part of her way. Her cellular phone and her bag were later found on the Lanchid bridge.
In the French Government, Catherine Vautrin, the Vice-Président of the National Assembly recalls the disappearance of Ophélie and asks for a French intervention. and Ophélie appears on Nicolas Sarkozy's blog.
Ophélie Bretnacher disappeared 2 and a half months after Eva Rhodes, the Yoko Ono and John Lennon model, in Hungary. Their families are planning to send a claim from the European Union and make known the fact that 4500 foreign people disappear each year in Hungary.
Good police and judicial cooperation between countries, members of the European Union is specified in the Treaty of Lisbon, applicable on 1 December 2009 and in the "Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union".
Her body was discovered in Csepel, in February 2009, in a backwater of the Danube. Homicide cannot be ruled out because of the finding of an hematoma on Ophelie's body as well as many gray areas during the search.
To date, no findings have been sent by Hungary such as the forensic analysis like Diatoms and the Danube search report, despite the intervention mission twice in 2009 of French investigators in Hungary and the local investigation seems not having progressed for one year.
In February 2010, her family filed a new claim for murder. The Bretnacher family lawyer is William Bourdon, the secretary-general of the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (1995-2000) and the lawyer of Transparency International.
In March 2010, a judicial inquiry is opened in Paris for kidnapping, sequestration, followed by murder.
One year later her friends, who were successful in raising 60 000 people on Facebook groups, from many European nations, launched a request for the second consecutive year in order to obtain some answers.
At the end of 2010, two years after her disappearance, more than 45,000 people from different countries took part to another Facebook event for Ophélie and, on December 4th, her friends announced that they will organize a new Internet mobilization:
"We will create an event for Ophélie, every year, until full light will be shed on her disappearance and death, until justice is done !"