I got a few emails asking what happened to part 1.  I have NO idea; my
mailbox said both were sent.  Something in the twilight zone stole it, I
imagine.  Here's part 1 (it was obviously meant to run at the same time
as pt.2), and my apologies.
[Moderator's note: Yes, I was wondering about that too!  Thanks for
explaining.  BIG]
 
[NOTE: this is simply a 'clearing out' of backlogged questions I
promised I would answer; don't infer anything from it. Replies or
comments should be forwarded to my personal email account I won't see
them on the FML)
 
Q: "I'm just learning about ferrets...there seems to be a lot of
confusion....It seems to me that each book is different from the other,
like one will say the ferret was domesticated before cats and another will
say it was later.  Is this all mythology or do people actually know?"
 
A: To know or not to know.  What was the question?
 
EVERY subject has a cloud of unproved 'truths' surrounding it (AKA: Common
Knowledge), and while I would be hesitant to consider them a mythology,
they do exist as a core of beliefs held true by individual ferret owners
(in an anthropological sense, mythology would be correct).  Some myths have
a basis in fact (like theobromide or onion poisoning); others exist because
of a TRADITION of believing them.  Regardless of the scientific basis of
belief, people will cling to unproved truths with a single mindedness
approaching that of a hob in rut looking for a jill.  Or shoe, rock, bump
on a log, anything.
 
1. The "Out of Egypt" origin.
Ever since Strabo mentioned Libyan ferrets, people have taken it as the
place of ferret domestication (Are Belgian rabbits from Belgium?  Are
french fries French?).  A King James mistranslation suggested to some that
the ferret once lived in the Holy Land.  If you accept ferrets lived in
Judah, Egypt is easy to believe; after all, when the Hebrews escaped Egypt,
they could have taken ferrets with them, right?  I've traced the Egyptian
idea to the mid-1800s, but it really took it's modern form in the 1980s
with Chuck and Fox Morton's book.  The idea existed before then, but with
various ferret club's references to Morton's book, as well as a nearly
rabid need to justify the domestication status of the ferret for legal
reasons, it became a cemented, core belief.  The truth is ferrets were NOT
domesticated in Egypt and were NOT mentioned in the Bible.  They have NOT
been domesticated longer than the cat.  Those are FACTS, sustained by a
tremendous amount of physical evidence.  The only 'evidence' for ferrets in
Egypt is the interpretation that a hieroglyph depicts a ferret, an animal
identified by trained, reviewed zooarchaeologists as a mongoose.  If the
Egyptians domesticated the ferret, why is there a god associated with every
other domesticated mammal (and most other mammals, reptiles and birds),
yet not a single god associated with the ferret?  Where are the bones and
mummies?  Where are the Babylonian, Greek or Phoenician references?  Where
is the linguistic evidence?  The genetic evidence?  Why doesn't the ferret
tolerate heat?  Why do their photoperiod cycles coincide with a middle
European origin?  Why the temperate zone fat distribution?  Where did they
get the polecats to domesticate since they are not naturally found in
Egypt?  Where are they now?  Why are they just on a hieroglyph and never
in papyri, like all the other domesticated mammals?  These aren't even the
hard questions.  It is either a conspiracy with Mother Nature being the
head conspirator, or they simply were not there.
 
So, where was the ferret domesticated?  Who knows?  The date was about 2400
years ago, and it must have occurred somewhere between the "western Morocco
to southern France to Greece to Mesopotamia to northern Turkey" region,
but even that is an educated guess based on historic documents.  No one
knows, and quite possibly it may never be known.  It appears from historic
documents the Greeks, Phoenicians and perhaps the Macedonians were involved
in the domestication process (and later, perhaps, the Romans).  But one
thing is for sure; it wasn't in Egypt.
 
2. The "European Polecat" progenitor.
There are basically three polecats (European, steppe, and Black-Footed
Ferret); two are European and could have been the progenitor of the
domesticated ferret.  Based on skull characters, the steppe polecat was
considered the likely choice.  Later, early genetics suggested the European
polecat was the ancestor.  Very recent work suggest the genetics are so
close and hybridization so common that the ancestor of the ferret is yet
to be determined.  In all likelihood, the domesticated ferret's ancestor
was the European polecat, but it is NOT proven.
 
3. "Chocolate will kill ferrets."
Enough chocolate will kill humans, so the statement is somewhat of a red
herring.  Chocolate is dangerous to dogs, but it has not been substantiated
in ferrets and lots of anecdotal evidence suggests it is harmless.
 
4. "Ferrets will choke on bones."
Absolutely.  They will also choke on fabric, meat, kibble, and even water.
An associated myth is cooked bone will splinter more.  This is inaccurate;
bone cooked with DRY HEAT will splinter more because the water and organics
have been cooked out of the hydroxyapitite, leaving it brittle, but bone
cooked in liquid (pressure cooking, boiling) gets softer because boiling
water dissolves both the minerals and protein matrix of the bone.  A boiled
chicken neck or back is no more dangerous than kibble, will clean the
teeth, and is a very good meal.
 
5. "Ferrets are gregarious."
Adult ferrets (like polecats) are by nature solitary animals and practice
same sex exclusion within the limits of their territory.  If imprinted
at a young age, ferrets retain their behavioral neotony (a trait of
domestication) and will accept other ferrets as siblings (especially if
all are neutered).  If not imprinted and neutered, then they MAY revert
to the exclusionary polecat 'mode' and reject other ferrets.  Once the
newcomer gets the 'nest scent', exclusion aggression generally ends.
 
6. "Marshall Farms ferrets are not as healthy as ferrets from private
    breeders."
There is simply no scientific evidence published to support this
conjectural myth.  Remember, conjecture has "con" at the beginning.
[Posted in FML issue 3251]