[2-part post combined]
 
Claire, what an intriguing post!  Thank you!  I hope that you post more
often.
 
Forgive me for the long quote of your post which appeared here in the
ferret mailing list yesterday.  The post deserves people thinking
carefully about multiple aspects and these lines best summarize the
parts that made me say, "Wow!"
 
>...Why do we do this?  We have taste buds for sugar.  We like sugar.
>It is thought that our tasting of, and craving for, sugar is an
>evolutionary adaptation to erratic food supplies.  If you can find a
>concentrated sugar source, like fruit, get it while you can.  Other
>animals, such as dogs, do not taste or crave sugar.  There is apparently
>no evolutionary advantage to them for that trait.
>
>Ferrets like sugar.  This, to me, suggests that they have an
>evolutionary prediliction towards seeking out sweet food (which can
>include rotting meat, by the way -- rotting helps convert that glycogen
>into sugar.) So they are in the same boat as people, IMHO.  The problem
>is not that sugar is bad for them (some on this list talk as if sugar
>were actually poisonous to them) but that we offer too much and in too
>concentrated a form...
 
I had not realized that there may be a scavenging past associated with
a taste for sweet, though I have to wonder if that is actually more of
a confirmation of a long history of food stashing behind them rather
than outside savanging, which actually makes sense and fits very well
with this known liver aspect (a quote from Dr. Bruce Williams):
 
>Probably the most common misinterpretation that I see on a routine
>basis is in the area of hepatic enzymes.  Remember, that the ferret,
>being by nature an obligate carnivore, has an extremely short
>digestive tract, and requires meals as often as every four to six
>hours.  Should food not be available, it possesses the ability to
>quickly mobilize peripheral fat stores in order to meet energy
>requirements.  When this physiologic mechanism is activated, the
>liver is literally flooded with fat, which results in hepatocellular
>swelling which may be marked.  The result of this swelling is the
>leakage of membrane enzymes such as alanine aminotransferase, and as
>the hepatocellular swelling increases, occlusion of bile canaliculi
>occurs, resulting, over time, in elevation of alkaline phosphatase.
>
>In conjunction with this physiologic change, elevations of ALT up to
>800 mg/dl can be seen, and alkaline phosphatase up to approximately
>100 mg/dl.  This often causes confusion to practitioners, who render
>an erroneous diagnosis of unspecified hepatic disease.  However,
>hepatic disease is quite uncommon in this species; the most common
>cause of true hepatic disease in the ferret is neoplasia, with
>lymphosarcoma causing 95% of cases.  Rarely bacterial infections
>of the liver or biliary tree may be seen.
 
from:  http://www.afip.org/ferrets/Clin_Path/ClinPath.html
 
though I am by no means saying that this is anywhere near being the full
picture.  Both diet and the pancreas have a lot of mysteries which need
solving.
 
In fact, I have to sadly confess that I hadn't wondered about their
taste for sweets...  Sorry
 
Now, dentally, their teeth don't point to any vegetable sources of
sweets, so the rotting meat and glycogen comment fits even better.
Humans have spatulate incisors, in fact, for most of us are canine
teeth have even become incisorform -- all the better for some ancestor
shoveling in fruit, insects, and maybe some sap.
 
Having once had a post op, high strung ferret with a hard past in a
bad situation swallow a shallow 1/4" section of my nose tip (He had
somewhat injured himself refusing to settle down very much too soon
after painful surgery and we had not yet given him some Torb to help
him to be quiet and ease the pain at that point, and then an outside
noise startled and frightened him while I was holding him right next
to my face.)  I have felt and observed a use of the short and small
ferret incisors often thought of as only grooming teeth.  The canines
go in first and the flesh ripped by those holes in a cross pattern
from those which was still visible later. For each a ray went forward
and another ray went backward, and perpendicular to them were a ray
from each out to the side and a ray toward the center. So the rays
were like this:
 
__|_____|__
     |          |
 
__|_____|__
     |          |
 
Then the more shallow cutting incisors enter where the rays that go
toward each other are, where there are already tears to help slice,
and scraped, then pulled back like wide forceps/tweezers.  The result
was that a neat square of skin was removed.
 
The ferret acted more horrified than I was, BTW, and never bit again
in his lifetime, despite multiple painful problems.  My nose healed
very nicely, too.  We already knew that noses tend to because of
Steve having previously had a large growth removed from his, so it
barely shows, though for a few weeks people would stare.
 
Anyway, I could see that the shallow incisors which are so good for
grooming and for dealing with dense and firm skin, could also use the
scrape and forceps move with decaying animal matter.
 
Why things are eaten is always intriguing because it can say a lot
about the animal's ancestors and adaptations.  For example, it turns
out that for many populations of gorillas some woods are the best
local source of needed salts -- hard on the teeth, but needed.
 
Yes, humans do tend to too often over-do the foods that were once much
more rare for many of our ancestors -- even very recently -- (sugars,
salts, flesh foods, etc.) and our ferrets can encounter that same
pitfall, too, when they live in a home setting.  Moderation,
moderation, moderation...
 
Forgive me for quoting myself to save time:
 
>I strongly agree with erring on the side of caution, but must point
>out that there is NOT data in place to indicate that sugars or
>carbohydrates actually cause insulinoma.  It is a hypothesis created
>from other hypotheses, and with so much breaking news about the
>pancreas (which is still in many ways an endocrinological mystery)
>it is essential to remember that not all hypotheses pan out once
>they have been well enough tested.  Most of the studies on which the
>hypothesis is based are not insulinoma studies but diabetes ones,
>and in other species.  There have also been two more recent studies
>calling into doubt the work based upon the glycemic index, a British
>one on the glycemic index itself and its failings, and a huge U.S.
>human epidemiological study that did not find a significant difference.
 
Yes, it makes complete sense to err on the side of caution for the
particular individual's needs (which can vary depending on things like
health and stage of illness), but I have to agree with Claire that there
can at times be an inclination for list members to take some concepts to
a (currently) unwarranted extreme in their writings, while we all wait
to have enough enough information to do more than make our best guesses
based on what info now exists.  That said, I have to say that we simply
do *not* feed our ferrets sugary cereals here.
 
-- Sukie, the frugivore with spatulate incisors-- okay, actually
omnivore (not a vet, and not speaking for any of the below in my
private posts)
Recommended health resources to help ferrets and the people who love
them:
Ferret Health List
http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/ferrethealth
FHL Archives
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
AFIP Ferret Pathology
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html
Miamiferrets
http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/
International Ferret Congress Critical References
http://www.ferretcongress.org
[Posted in FML issue 5249]