Do dormice know the Green Cross Code?

IT MAY seem the unlikeliest behaviour for one of Britain's smallest most elusive creatures but new research suggests dormice have learned the Green Cross Code and are crossing busy dual carriageways to live in the central reservations.

A handful of the rodents have been found happily living in the middle of the A30 and A38 – the two busiest roads in Devon and Cornwall.

Around 50 dormice were electronically tagged to see how the A30 near Bodmin in Cornwall was affecting population numbers and some were found on the narrow strip of land in the middle of the roads.

Two other sites in the South West are also being monitored, on the A38 at Bellamarth Copse and another site on the A30 at Station Wood, outside Okehampton.

Such behaviour has never been recorded before and staff from the Highways Agency, who made the discovery, have been amazed the little creatures seem unconcerned by the cars and lorries thundering by just yards away at 70mph.

Alison Sixsmith of the Highways Agency said: "We weren't aware dormice could cross a road. They're usually tree dwelling – they live in trees just on the edge of woodland.

"The fact that they have crossed is fantastic because it means the road isn't the imposing barrier we thought it was."

She added that the central reservations provided ideal habitat because they were relatively undisturbed.

"There's so little interference," she said. "Very few people, very little movement. The cars don't seem to put them off – the noise doesn't seem to put them off.

"They like to live on the edge of woods – this acts as a corridor which helps with their movements."

The study is aiming to find out how the deaths of animals like dormice can be avoided on roads. A spokesman for the Highways Agency said the work was still in the very early stages but suggested "we may not need to put any mitigating measures in place in the future".

Numbers of dormice have plummeted by 95 per cent over the past century and under the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act, a licence is needed just to touch one.

The hazel dormouse, Muscardinus avellanarius, is found in only half the areas it inhabited a century ago, with only 10,000 remaining in Britain.

Before this study, it was thought that fragmentation of its woodland habitat was the biggest threat, because the animal is so scared of being torn apart by tooth, claw or talon that it generally refuses to cross open ground, whether roads, tracks or fields. The combination of fragmented habitat and fear of open spaces means that many dormouse populations are at risk of dying out because numbers are too low to provide a big enough gene pool for long-term survival.

Leonardo Gubert, the Highways Agency ecologist who has been tagging the dormice, said questions about the animal's movements first started being asked six years ago, when the agency discovered a dormouse nest among the shrubbery on the central reservation on a section of the A30 at Penlan, east of Bodmin.

"We have been tagging individuals with a microchip – similar to those used with domestic animals.

"Every time we catch one, we scan the chip and can tell their movements.

"We have found animals in the central reservation every year since the study began in 2007."

He said that in the last two years, they had recorded a total of 40 dormice, adults and juveniles, living at the site, and had even come across litters of dormice.