The UK is home to a wide variety of mammals across land, sea, and sky. While grey squirrels, rabbits, and foxes are a familiar sight, one species outnumbers them all.
Rodents make up the largest order of mammals worldwide, living on every major landmass. It’s no surprise, then, that the UK’s most common wild animal is part of this prolific group.
What's the most common wild animal in the UK?
You'd be forgiven for thinking the rat or fox might be the most common wild species, but the field vole (Microtus agrestis) holds the title of the UK’s most abundant wild animal – and most common mammal, with an estimated 75 million spread across grasslands, heathlands, moorlands, and even gardens.
Preferring areas of long grass, these small grey-brown rodents weave intricate tunnel systems beneath the cover. Once confined to England, Scotland, and Wales, field voles have more recently been recorded in Ireland too.
As a vital part of the food chain, they provide a key food source for predators including foxes, stoats, weasels, domestic cats, and birds of prey.
Native to the UK, their diet is largely made up of grasses and leaves.
More about UK wildlife
- Do magpies really steal shiny objects? Are frogs really unable to breathe underwater? Separating the fact from fiction in 11 common animal myths
- Extremely rare spider spotted in London for the first time ever
- Do birds have ears?
- Smooth snakes, adders and sand lizards: UK national park to create huge haven for rare reptiles
