Sukie and Bob, thanks for your input.:-)

All of the crepuscular research that I've done so far has only been on
polecats. Both of the links I included were about the European polecat.

The one I'll refer to here is "Time budget as related to feeding
tactics of European polecat"

http://ead.univ-angers.fr/~ecologie/Pub_PDF/Time%20Budget%20BehavProc99.pdf

Although the sample is comparatively small (9), it has been tracked
over time (between 1988 and 1992) and the results agree with findings
of others. Also, it is very easy to understand.

"Polecats spend an average of 7 h 31 min per day (+/- 62 min) active
without significant difference among individuals (F=0.48, n=9, Duncan
test P>0.05). Animals were resting more than two thirds of the time
(68.5%). Polecats were mainly nocturnal since animals were active 52.0%
of the night compared to 11 1% of the day without any significant
difference between males and females (nocturnal activity U 1.5,
P=>0.05; diurnal activity U 9.0, P>0.05)."

The rest of the report gives a fascinating insight into the habits of
polecats.

LOL Bob, you started by saying "Ferrets are indeed crepuscular!"

and then seriously messed with my mind by saying

Part of the answer lies in understanding that the classification
of animals into the "nocturnal - crepuscular - diurnal"
activity categories is a totally arbitrary.

For that, you will need to be punished. :-D

I guess my ferrets (18 in residence at the moment) live in an unusual
situation because they are never caged and have access to indoors and
out, 24/7. They have an insomniac, stay-at-home carer who is available
to them at odd hours of the day and night with no regular hours of
activity kept. In my opinion, this lets them set their own time
schedule. It was their nocturnal habit and, depending on the
temperature, their daytime activity which lead me to query the source
of the claim that ferrets are crepuscular.

It seems to me that the activity timetable of polecats depends mainly
on what type of prey they are hunting, and the weather, and I think
they would be better described as nocturnal and sometimes
opportunistically crepuscular eg frogs are active nocturnally, so
when polecats prey on frogs, they are then nocturnal too.

Nevertheless, because the boundaries of the term "crepuscular" is
deemed arbitrary" and a only a "sub-set", it would appear that in this
case, one person's opinion is just as valid as another's and I still
don't know for sure who is more correct. :-)

Shirley

[Posted in FML 5547]