Regarding ferret whiskers.  While the whiskers (vibrissae) in some
mammals might have a slight taxonomic interest, they have no such value in
mustelids, ferrets in particular.  Taxonomic classifications are typically
based on similaries in skull and dental morphologies, reproductive
abilities, cladistics, and more lately, on genomic relationships.
 
The front vibrassae in ferrets are a touch (tactile sense) organ, used to
warn the animal that they are about to bump into a wall, they have found
their prey, or, as Ed suggests, where something is under their nose.  They
are nature's equivilent of the cane used by the blind.  Interestingly
enough, ferrets cannot see anything below their nose.  While I doubt if the
level of sensory perception is great, it is still enough to tell the ferret
about where something is; not what it is.  In other words, because the
whisker is nothing more than a thick hair, it cannot tell you if something
is hot or cold, or wet or dry.  But, when it bumps something, the hair acts
like a long lever, hinged at the skin, that pushes against tactile sense
organs surrounding the root base.  So, very little movement of the whisker
can do a lot of tactile stimulation.
 
****** Regarding Ed's experiment with ferret smell.
Sorry, but your experiment has two fatal flaws.  First, evaporation of
water *IS* temperature dependant, *BUT* as a gas, water diffuses rapidly to
form a homogeneous (evenly-spaced) mixture with air.  While a bowl of hot
water will evaporate faster, all that extra energy in the water molecule
just increases it's kinetic energy, pushing it faster and farther into the
room, which simply means the room reaches air and water vapor homogenetity
faster.  Basic high school chemistry.  Think of when you use a humidifier
or boil a pot of water on the stove; you are not humidifying the area
around the machine or the stove but the entire space.  So the relative
humidity around a hot bowl tends to be (in general) close to that of a cool
bowl (unless one is at 100C, the other at 1C, you have them separated by a
great distance in a huge room and you work VERY fast), because water vapor
is a gas that "evenly spaces" itself rapidly in air.
 
Second, without getting into smell physiology, lets just say that the only
way you can smell something is if you have the proper receptor for it on
your olfactory receptors.  To tell the difference between simply sensing
a change in humidity compared to actually "smelling" a water molecule is
easy; you just attach a "marker" to the water molecule and then test to see
if the marker is attached to the olfactor receptor.  One quick way to do
this is to make sure all your water has either a hydrogen or an oxygen with
a different number of neutrons in the nucleus compared to normal H or O
atoms.  Expensive, but easy to do.  Of course, you would probably have to
euthanize the ferrets so you can test the olfactory receptors for these
isotopes.  This type of experiment has already been done in a number of
animals, which is why scientists *KNOW* dogs can smell water (as opposed
to detecting changes in humidity).  All Ed's experiment would do is show
ferrets can sense changes in relative humidity; it cannot prove they can
smell water.  Sorry Ed, but at least you're thinking.
 
******
Finally, the caecum (or cecum) is the very first part of the large
intestines and forms a pouch or cul-de-sac, although in some mammals it can
be a very long tube.  The vermiform appendix (vermiform means worm-shaped)
is actually part of the caecum--it is just a narrowed extension of it.
Depending on the diet and evolutionary history of a particular mammal, the
caecum can be a relic and no longer functional or it can be an important
aspect of digestion.  For example, both horses and rabbits have extremely
long caecums that are essential to digestion, yet in people, the caecum is
very short with little functional value.  Mammals with a large caecum are
invariably herbivores and those with a small caecum are generally omnivores
or carnivores.  While a generality, the smaller the caecum, the more
carnivorous the mammal, humans not excepted (The human caecum is a 2-3 inch
pouch with an appendix about 2-4 inches long; there were no vegetarian
cavemen).  The ferret does not have a caecum, a trait shared with other
_Mustela_ species.
 
A functional caecum is a digestive organ.  It takes in cellulose-laden food
and through the action of bacteria, breaks down the cellulose into sugars.
Not all of a food-bolus will end up in the caecum--some of it passes on by
without entering.  The concentration of bacteria is higher in the caecum
because it is a dead-end and they are not pushed through so rapidly.
Because the caecum has muscles like the rest of the intestine, it can
periodically push it's contents back into the intestine, but since the
breakdown products of cellulose tend to be various nutrients, sugars, water
and gasses (can you say methane?), more solid stuff goes in than comes out.
Just think of the caecum as a self-contained bacterial fermentation chamber
which takes in cellulose and puts out sugar (and lots of gas).  Not much
different than a septic tank, really.  Thats right; a horse is just a
hay-burning septic tank on legs.
 
As for the ferret, it has no caecum (nor vermiform appendix) which means
it has virtually no ability to digest plant materials.  That, and the
extremely rapid intestinal passage time (2-4 hrs), are substantial proof
the ferret is an obligate, or primary, carnivore.  That means it is
uniquely adapted to a diet of animal flesh and cannot digest plant foods
(even raisins pass through essentially undigested, only giving up fruit
sugars).  Ferrets are about as far from herbivores as is possible.
 
Oh, want to know *WHY* the ferret passage time is so fast?  Because the
ferret is small and long, it has to burn a lot of sugar to maintain body
heat.  That means it has to eat a lot of food per body weight.  Now, if the
passage time was slow, the stomach wouldn't have time to empty before the
ferret needed to eat again.  So the ferret has a shortened and simplified
digestive system designed to extract the maximum amount of nutrients from
animal bodies as fast as possible, then get the stinky stuff out of the
way for the next meal.  Compared to the dog or even the cat, the ferret
digestive system is shorter, simplier and faster, which is why I have
objections to the massive amounts of carbohydrates included in commercial
ferret foods, especially kibbles.  It just isn't natural for their bodies
to process, and I think it is a key factor in ferret digestive ailments.
 
Bob C and 19 Pharting Septic Poletanks
[Posted in FML issue 2885]