I had a family emergency and have been offline for a few days.  Let's
just say one silly son, plus one off-road bicycle, plus one 15 ft cliff
equals a single red-faced offspring peering over a pinned and casted leg.
Darwin wrote about offspring like this, or he would have had he known
about riding offroad bikes in the vicinity of limestone cliffs.  The boy
must have angels hovering over him.
 
Regarding tooth brushing in wild polecats; I'm not sure, but I doubt
if it is a regular practice, at least not in the way that the lovely,
red-haired Mary describes.  I think the only brushing a polecat does is
fluffing up that tail into a bottle-brush from time to time. ;-)
 
Excluding garbage-eating wild animals, such as bears and raccoons, wild
carnivores RARELY have problems with tartar (dental calculus) or decay
(caries).  I can honestly say that in the thousands of carnivore skulls
I have studied, tartar and decay are so minor that they are considered
statistically insignificant.  Broken or damaged teeth are fairly common,
especially in the larger carnivores, but for the most part, teeth remain
clean, and while they may have significant wear facets, they generally
last the lifetime of the animal with little problem.
 
Our immediate problem relates to diet.  Modern dried ferret diets use
highly processed carbohydrates as a binding agent (between 35%-70%
depending on the source) which translates nutritionally as feeding
ferrets meat powder mixed in a significant amount of sugar.  These
caloric nuggets are touted to "clean" teeth, but in carnivores that
statement is extremely misleading (and probably false advertizing!).
If they cleaned tartar from teeth, then WHY do cats, dogs, and ferrets
require protracted dental care?  Why do they suffer tartar buildup,
bad breath, receeding gums, and, ultimately, systemic infections?
Obviously, the ability of hard kibble to clean teeth is overrated.
 
When a kibble is consumed, tiny fragments (some microscopic) of the
sugar-rich food remain in the mouth, turn into a pasty white substance,
and coats the surfaces of the mouth and teeth (food dishes fill up with
these tiny fragments, as many people have observed).  This provides both
a home and a food source for bacteria.  The process is helped by short-
and long-term pH changes in the mouth (oral pH is significantly
different in animals eating a meat diet compared to those eating a
carbohydrate-rich kibble).  It takes a short time for the bacteria-laden
white substance to calcify into the building blocks of dental calculus.
The bacterial love the scratches put on teeth by the hardened structure
of the kibble (dental attrition).
 
My ferrets regularly eat whole mouse and rat carcasses (I buy them as
frozen feeders; my heart is too soft to kill them myself), which have
natural substances that clean teeth of tartar and white substance (fur,
sinew, bone), while at the same time helping to build an oral pH that
reduces bacterial growth.  As a result, my ferrets have minor or no
tartar buildup.  Admittedly, my ferrets mostly eat chicken, rabbit,
duck, turkey, and the like, and only eat a small amount of kibble, so
my problem is minimal  (Yes, I feed kibble.  You never known when you
have to have someone babysit the brood, and I usually have them fed
kibble at that time).  For ferrets eating kibble, the ONLY way to keep
the teeth clean is by regular tooth brushing and instrument cleaning.
 
Bob C
[Posted in FML issue 4113]