🐦Little Auk
The little auk (Europe) or dovekie is a small auk, the only member of the genus Alle. It breeds in huge numbers on islands in the high Arctic of the North Atlantic Ocean. There are two subspecies; A. a. alle breeds in Greenland, Novaya Zemlya and Svalbard; and A. a. polaris on Franz Josef Land. A small number of individuals also breed on Little Diomede Island in the Bering Strait, with additional breeding individuals thought to occur on King Island, St. Lawrence Island, St. Matthew Island and the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea. It also formerly bred on Grímsey just north of Iceland, but is extinct there now. In winter, they disperse widely across the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans, with the largest numbers in the Arctic close to the pack ice edge, and smaller numbers south to northern Great Britain in the eastern Atlantic, and Nova Scotia in the western Atlantic.
Text: Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
IUCN Red List assessment, 2018.
- Body mass
- 0.18 kg
- Body length
- 0.25 m
- Shoulder height
- not recorded
- Top speed
- not recorded
- Bite force
- not recorded
- Maximum lifespan
- not recorded
Everything we know about the Little Auk
Typical adult figures. Where a value is an estimate rather than a measurement, it says so.
Body mass0.18 kgrecord 0.16 kg · SeaLifeBaseAVONETDetails ↓Hide ↑
Record: largest individual on record
Source: AVONET · v1.1 (Tobias et al. 2022) · CC BY 4.0
Body length0.25 mmaximum recorded, total lengthSeaLifeBaseDetails ↓Hide ↑
Source: SeaLifeBase · v25.04 · CC BY-NC 4.0
Tail length0.03 mAVONETDetails ↓Hide ↑
Source: AVONET · v1.1 (Tobias et al. 2022) · CC BY 4.0
Wing length0.12 mAVONETDetails ↓Hide ↑
Source: AVONET · v1.1 (Tobias et al. 2022) · CC BY 4.0
Beak length0.02 mAVONETDetails ↓Hide ↑
Source: AVONET · v1.1 (Tobias et al. 2022) · CC BY 4.0
Tarsus length0.02 mAVONETDetails ↓Hide ↑
Source: AVONET · v1.1 (Tobias et al. 2022) · CC BY 4.0
Trophic levelCarnivoreAVONETDetails ↓Hide ↑
Source: AVONET · v1.1 (Tobias et al. 2022) · CC BY 4.0
HabitatMarineAVONETDetails ↓Hide ↑
Source: AVONET · v1.1 (Tobias et al. 2022) · CC BY 4.0
LifestyleAquaticAVONETDetails ↓Hide ↑
Source: AVONET · v1.1 (Tobias et al. 2022) · CC BY 4.0
Volume l0.2 LaverageDetails ↓Hide ↑
Body mass at ~1.0 kg/L, the density of vertebrate tissue.
average = a mean across sexes or species in a group.
Not recorded for Little Auk yet: shoulder height, top speed, bite force, maximum lifespan.
Family tree
- kingdomAnimalia
- ›phylumChordata
- ›classAves
- ›orderCharadriiformes
- ›familyAlcidae
- ›genusAlle
- ›speciesAlle alle
- superclassTetrapoda
- orderSauria
- classBirds · Aves
- genusAlle
All 10 branches ↓Fewer branches ↑
- kingdomMetazoa
- phylumChordata
- subphylumCraniata
- subphylumVertebrata
- superclassGnathostomata
- superclassSarcopterygii
- superclassTetrapoda
- orderSauria
- classBirds · Aves
- genusAlle
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