Sieving has revealed large numbers of small animal remains, fish, rodents, insectivores - mostly batrachians - and an abnormal quantity of weasel remains, including the only animal skeletons on the site.
There are no rats or domestic cats at Acy-Romance, as these two animals did not appear in Gaul before the end of the Iron Age. But large numbers of rodents, including mice, were already helping themselves from the stores of grain. Combating these rodents could have been the reason that weasels were kept, as they are relatively easy to tame, as described by one of Buffon's correspondents:
"Weasels when captured very young lose their wild and bad-tempered nature: this nature can even change to submission and faithfulness towards the master who feeds them."
"In winter, they generally stay in the grain stores and barns: they often even spend the spring there, rearing their young in the hay or straw: during all this time they wage war, with even greater success than cats, on rats and mice, because they cannot escape them and the weasels can even follow them down their holes. "
