Well, our Morney doesn't stick her head in my mouth further than my
final molars, but she is also someone who does that. We use it at times
to demonstrate trust. We have some others who like to warm their hands
in our mouths, and use used to find comfort from putting her hands in
our mouths when she was worried. She'd do it till she calmed down.

Because many baby members of carnivora, especially the canid branch, do
that to learn foods they can eat I have had infant raccoons I raised
(decades ago on Long Island, NY -- which had no terrestrial rabies --
with the raccoons being from Fish and Game) do that regularly when I
raised them, have had a larger raccoon another person rehabbed just
come up and do it, and I unexpectedly had a wolf-dog hybrid who was
pretty well grown shove his muzzle into my mouth and start licking
(very unpleasant given his size and drooling) at one point in the
1970s or early '80s.

Our youngest ferret, Pivot, who will turn a year old this month and
who did NOT come from her mother too young (having gotten her from the
breeder at a known older age) still on rare occasion does that to me if
she thinks I am eating something good, but never did it with Steve. (He
is a lacto-vegetarian so it might be expected for ice cream.) I can
also quickly introduce her to any form of food by licking it. When she
figures that I would eat it she will do so. I did that with some egg
just last week.

At least none of the primates I used to work with would do that. They
would, however, open my mouth, reach in with their fingers and remove
whatever it was that they wanted to try, then pop it into their own
mouths.

Hey, in some parts of the world, and in the history of each of us, no
matter where our ancestors heralded from, it was the norm for human
mothers to chew food and share the resulting puree with the babes who
were past needing only nursing to introduce them with food.

So, yes, ferrets can learn foods that way.

Meanwhile, we watch them for when they won't drink the water locally.
They are far better at spotting a problem before it is announced than
we are. Ages ago there was something called "blessing the milk". It was
noticed that even though ferrets could not always spot when milk wasn't
good they were better at it than humans, so the people would see if the
ferret would drink any milk that might be questionable. If the ferret
did then it was more likely to be safe for the people. That was called
"having the ferret bless the milk".

Sukie (not a vet)

Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html
http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html

[Posted in FML 6234]