Sable

The name sable appears to be of Slavic origin and entered most Western European languages via the early medieval fur trade. Thus the Russian () and Polish became the German , Dutch ; the French , Spanish , Finnish , Portuguese and Medieval Latin derive from the Italian form (). The English and Medieval Latin word comes from the Old French or . ==Description==

Males measure in body length, with a tail measuring , and weigh . Females have a body length of , with a tail length of . The winter pelage is longer and more luxurious than the summer coat. Different subspecies display geographic variations of fur colour, which ranges from light to dark brown, with individual coloring being lighter ventrally and darker on the back and legs. Individuals also display a light patch of fur on their throat which may be gray, white, or pale yellow. Their skulls are similar to those of pine martens, but larger and more robust with more arched zygomatic arches. ==Distribution and habitat==

File:Russian sable.jpg|left|thumb|A Russian sable, as illustrated in ''The Trapper's Guide'', 1867. The Russian variety yields the most valuable sable fur. but other recent scholarly sources have identified anything from seven to thirty. ==Behaviour and ecology==

The sable inhabits dense forests dominated by spruce, pine, larch, Siberian cedar, and birch in both lowland and mountainous terrain. Its home range is estimated at in size, depending on local terrain and food availability. However, when resources are scarce, it moves considerable distances in search of food, with travel rates of per day having been recorded. It is primarily crepuscular, hunting during the hours of twilight, but become more active in the day during the mating season. Its dens are well hidden, and lined by grass and shed fur, but may be temporary, especially during the winter, when the animal travels more widely in search of prey. Sable offspring is born with eyes closed and skin covered in a very thin layer of hair. Newborn cubs weigh between and average in length. They open their eyes between 30 and 36 days, and leave the nest shortly afterwards. At seven weeks, the young are weaned and given regurgitated food. They reach sexual maturity at the age of two years. They have been reported to live for up to twenty two years on fur farms, and up to eighteen years in the wild. The sable can interbreed with the pine marten. This has been observed in the wild, where the two species overlap in the Ural Mountains, and is sometimes deliberately encouraged on fur farms. The resulting hybrid, referred to as a kidus, is slightly smaller than a pure sable, with coarser fur, but otherwise similar markings, and a long bushy tail. Kiduses are typically sterile, although there has been one recorded instance of a female kidus successfully breeding with a male pine marten. ==History of fur use and status==

and Her Children by Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun (1787)Versailles, Musée national du Château et des TrianonsThe Queen is shown wearing a dress and a pouf trimmed with sable. . The price corresponds with the upper coat's abundance of glossy blackness. A wealthy 17th-century Russian diplomat once described the sable as "A beast that the Ancient Greeks and Romans called the Golden Fleece." In England, sable fur was held in great esteem. Henry I was presented with a wreath of black sable by the Bishop of Lincoln, for no less than £100, a considerable sum at the time. The Russian conquest of Siberia was largely spurred by the availability of sables there. Ivan Grozny once demanded an annual tribute of 30,000 sable pelts from the newly conquered Kazan Tatars, though they never sent more than a thousand, as Russia at the time was unable to enforce the tribute due to wars with Sweden and Poland. The best skins were obtained in Irkutsk and Kamchatka. According to the Secret History of the Mongols, when Genghis Khan married his first wife, Börte Ujin, his mother Hoelun received a coat of sable furs from the girl's parents. This was reportedly a very noble gift, serving not only an aesthetic need but also a practical one. Shortly after, when the young Shigi Qutuqu was found wandering a destroyed Tatar camp, he was recognised to be of noble descent because of his sable-lined silk jerkin. According to Atkinson's Travels in Asiatic Russia, Barguzin, on Lake Baikal, was famed for its sables. The fur of this population is a deep jet black with white tipped hair. Eighty to ninety dollars were sometimes demanded by hunters for a single skin. As with minks and martens, sables were commonly caught in steel traps. The Soviet Union allowed Old Believer communities to continue their traditional way of life on the condition that they hand over all sable skins they produced. The dissolution of the Soviet Union led to an increase of hunting and poaching in the 1990s, in part because wild caught Russian furs are considered the most luxurious and demand the highest prices on the international market. Currently, the species has no special conservation status according to the IUCN Red List, though the isolated Japanese subspecies M. zibellina brachyurus is listed as "data-deficient". Sable fur remains highly valued and is integrated into various clothing fashion items. It is used to decorate collars, sleeves, hems and hats (see, for example the shtreimel). The so-called kolinsky sable-hair brushes used for watercolour or oil painting are not manufactured from sable hair, but from that of the Siberian weasel. ==References==