Q: "Do you know much about the ferret's skeleton?  How are they different
    from people?  Are their legs short or are their backs long?
 
A: Neither.....they're telescoping. Ok, who paid you to ask this? I'll try
   to muddle through this one, but there will be a quiz at the end.
 
The skeleton of all mammals is basically the same, so if you study one, you
study them all.  Humans have about 204 bones in their skeleton, however, it
actually runs between 196-214 depending on what you include.  Younger
mammals can have 2-3 times more bones than adults, but they ultimately fuse
together.  If you look closely for differences in the ferret skeleton, you
will find some of the vertebrae are a little bit longer (proportionately)
than in most mammals.  This is especially true of the neck vertebrae.  The
limb bones are a little bit shorter than in most mammals.  Finally, the
skull of ferrets is very long compared to most mammalian skulls.  You know
what a human skull looks like.  Imagine someone flattening the top of your
skull until it was level with your eyebrows, then pulling your nose and jaw
out, say 7 or 8 inches so you can no longer see anything under your nose.
Now, pull the back of your head and stretch the skull almost a foot.  You
now have the human equivilent of a ferret skull.  Cool.  Now, find a San
Diego Padres ballcap that fits.
 
The end result of each vertebrae being a little longer than usual (plus the
long skull) is a body that is proportionally quite long.  Shorten each leg
bone a little, and you magically have the ferret, adapted to run down tiny
tunnels, and still be able to carry their catch without tripping over it.
Imagine a dachshund trying to carry another dachshund in its mouth and get
somewhere fast.  Those legs would trip over something with every step and
the weinie dog would get nowhere fast.  But add a long neck, and now the
loser can be carried enough forward to keep out of the way of the victor's
feet.  Trim those ears a bit, and tie something stinky to it's butt, and you
have a really funny looking dog disguised as a ferret.  Wanna bet the CaCa
Fish and Gestapo will outlaw them?
 
The skull is long and flat for several reasons.  First, it makes for a
powerful biting force, proportionately one of the strongest in mammals,
which is very useful in killing animals near your size having teeth that can
bite through a pencil (hey, imagine a giant beaver snapping at your nose,
with incisors as thick as your middle finger).  It also turns the body into
a streamlined tube, which is really neat when running down tunnels and you
don't want to bump your head or need to turn around really fast.  It also
puts your teeth right out in the front.  Open those jaws and all you see are
teeth.  White gleaming teeth, sharp and pointed, coming at you, with this
awful stink and a loud hissing.  Ooooooooo!  The next D-grade horror film
from the Ca Ca Fish & Gestapo.
 
Arm bones: The ferret clavicle is a tiny little ossification in the muscle
where the clavicle should be, and is not always found, but the scapula,
humerus, radis, and ulna are about the same as ours.  Their elbow has an
extension on the end of it to make their arms very strong for digging.  The
wrist bones (carpals), the hand bones (metacarpals), and the finger bones
(phalanges) are almost the same, except for the 3rd phalanx which has a
claw-like process on the end to support the nail.  Ferrets have more
carpal-metacarpal sesamoids than we usually do, which are tiny bones within
the tendons where they pass over joints.  Most of us have 1 or 2 of them at
our thumbs, but ferrets generally have 2 for every digit.  Oh, the thumb has
2 phalanges and the fingers have 3 for both humans and ferrets.  The thumb
in the ferret is like a finger.  Just imagine what a ferret could do with a
human thumb....
 
Leg bones: The femur, tibia and fibula are very similar.  The ankle bones
are sightly different to improve jumping ability.  The foot bones are like
the hand bones.  The pelvis (composed of 2 os coxae and 1 sacrum) is similar
to other carnivores; human pelves are twisted because of our upright
posture, and widened to allow our infant's hypertrophied cranium to pass
through (Ouch is right).  Oh yes, the male ferret has a bacula (os penis)
and the female an os clitoris.  Humans don't.  Figure it out.
 
Back and Chest bones are very similar to all other carnivores, except the
length of the vertebrae.  Human vertebral columns are modified for upright
posture, and the neck bones are much shorter.  Both ferrets and humans have
7 cervical vertebrae (as well as giraffes), so the length of the neck is
related to the length of each vertebrae.  Ferrets have 15 thoracic
vertebrae, so they have 30 ribs (sometimes only 14T with 28 ribs); humans
have 12 T-vertebrae.  Their sternum is made up of 8 bones, humans usually 1
or 2.  Ferrets have 5 or 6 lumbar vertebrae, humans 5.  Ferrets have 3
sacral vertebrae, humans 5.  Oh, humans don't have a long tail you big ape;
we have 3-4 caudal vertebrae, ferrets about 18.
 
Head bones: In humans, there is a single hyoid bone and in ferrets have 9.
The ferret's jaws do not fuse in the center like a human, and their upper
incisors are rooted in a premaxillary bone (2 total) not found in humans.
The rest of the skull is about the same except for a couple of bones that
fuse in humans.  The place where the jaw articulates with the skull is
different, and the ferret has a bony covering over the middle ear called the
auditory bulla which protects the ear and improves hearing.
 
Now there are quite literally thousands of ways the ferret skeleton can be
told from the human (besides size), but for the most part, they are more
alike than different.  This is true of most mammals (excluding those that
fly or swim) and sometimes you can get fooled.  The bear paws look close
enough like human hands that even police have been fooled.  When I was in Ca
Ca Land, the police asked me to help determine the sex and ethnic background
of a fresh human femur.  It was from a black bear.
 
Now the quiz.  Knowing what I said were the average number of human bones,
and hearing the differences as described, how many bones does the average
adult ferret have?
 
Bob C and 20 MO Boneheads
[Posted in FML issue 2173]