I will be home Sunday evening, and will take a few days off before leaving
(again) for Weasel Town.  My rescheduled first day of work is June 30.
Because I am still pawing through the national organization thingie, I will
hold my next post on it until I return to Columbia.
 
I wanted to thank everyone who bidded for me to take their pictures.
Honestly, I was shocked at the high prices the two settings garnered.  It
touched me deeply, not because it makes me look good, but because of the
depth of caring you have demonstrated towards Kodo and the issues involved.
You are truely great people.
 
Q: (Several Private Emails): You said ferrets imprinted on foods at a very
young age, but what about cats?  Is that why they can go feral so easily?
If both are domesticated carnivores, why don't they both go feral or not
go feral equally?
 
A: Ferrets don't go feral (in the USA) because they KNOW where the raisins
are, and you don't find them in the woods of Utah.
 
First, let me get some definitions out of the way.  'Domestic' refers to a
species from a specific (local) area; "wild domestic black-footed ferret" is
actually proper.  It has also been used to describe domesticated animals,
but not typically in scientific journals.  'Domesticated' only refers to
animals that have met the required changes caused by the process of
domestication, such as in the domesticated ferret.  'Semi-domesticated'
refers to species in the process of domestication, or only partially
domesticated, such as in the mink or the reindeer.  Many argue (and I agree)
the use of "semi" is redundant; species are either domesticated or not.  I
don't wish to malign anyone, but let the legal profession keep their
particular definitions, and we people involved in biological (zoological)
issues, cladistics, phylogeny and taxonomy can use ours.  I strongly
encourage the use of domesticated when referring to the pet ferret.  Let the
lawyers stick domestic somewhere in their briefs....
 
Of the domesticated mammals, almost all are herbivores.  The exceptions are
swine (omnivore), dogs (omnivore to carnivore), cats (strict carnivore), and
ferret (strict carnivore).  (I am purposely excluding animals recently
domesticated for fur, such as fox and mink).  Out of the entire list all can
go feral, including the ferret, as New Zealand proves.  But, ferality is not
a bimodal phenomenon; it is a continuum, and ferrets are clearly at one end
while most of the other mammals are ar the opposite end.  One of the major
reasons is lost in recent history, unless you work a farm.
 
Put yourself in the place of a person thousands of years ago.  You wanted an
animal that took care of itself, yet hung around to be easily exploited.  So
most heribvore were bred to increase reproduction, body mass, milk yields,
etc, but were also left with the instincts to live semi-wild.  Round up some
longhorns and you will see what I mean.  Another example is the relationship
between people and reindeer.  Dogs and cats are no exception.  Cats were
bred to be hunters, but to hang around the grainery.  Dogs likewise; in a
study of native people's attitudes towards dogs, it was found that they were
rarely fed, but allow to hunt on their own or to scavenge food around the
camp.  The exceptions were those plumped up for ceremonies (burp!).
Remember most of the differences you see in the various breeds of animals
are of a very recent nature, and most do not go back more than a few
centuries.
 
Ferrets on the other hand were NOT bred to hunt, irregardless of what you
might read in the ferret books.  They were bred to CHASE rabbits out of
holes, and ferreters hated the discovery of a ferret that actually killed a
rabbit.  To prevent such occurances, they resorted to a wide range of
preventative measures, including breaking off the teeth, sewing the jaws
shut, and straps and muzzles.  I believe the instinct to hunt was purposely
bred out of ferrets to prevent 'holing up.' Evidence of this is the numerous
references to crossing with polecats to bring back some of the hunting
instincts of the ferrets.  I have also noted that the musty smell of ferrets
is somewhat disproportionate compared to the body smell of other mustelids,
and I think the smellier ferrets chased the rabbits out of the holes better,
so ferrets were bred to be smellier.
 
Did people know they were doing this?  Nope, it was out of awareness, but
over two thousand years, the traits became intrenched.  So modern ferrets
have a poor hunting instinct and have a stong smell.  This is not to say the
instinct was completely eliminated; remember I said ferrets were crossed
with polecats?  From my own experience, I have found maybe a single ferret
out of 8 to 10 has strong hunting instincts.  With the New Zealand ferrets,
probably 80 to 90% of the ferrets perished after release; the rest had the
instincts to survive, and with NO other competitors, were able get to over
the hump and survive.  It helped that polecats and ferret-polecat crosses
were also released; cross-breeding must have helped the surviving ferrets
and their offspring out.
 
Complicating the issue is imprinting.  Most carnivores prey-imprint; the
exact timing differs from species to species.  Mostly, the imprinting takes
place during the period of time when the animal is sequestered in the den,
but extends partially into juvenilehood.  In ferrets, this is the first 3 to
6 months.  Cats are probably about the same, and in dogs, it is longer.  The
difference is, ferrets are primarily olfactory hunters, cats are primarily
visual hunters, and canids somewhere in the middle.  You can see this for
yourself if you put one of each animal into a strange room.  The cat will
prowl around, primarily looking at things, the dog will look and sniff, and
the ferret will put its nose to the ground and sniff everything.  Their
investigatory behavors parallel their hunting behaviors.
 
Cats imprint on shapes and movements, and to a lesser degree to smells,
while ferrets imprint on smells, and to a minor degree on movement.  A cat
will react to a vole, rat, mouse, gopher, chipmonk, or weasel nearly
identically once it learns that any one of the animals is good to eat,
because the visual clues overide the olfactory clues.  Ferrets might
investigate a new smell, but unless it has learned during the imprinting
period that the smell could be food, it is not recognized as such; it must
learn it can eat a vole, rat, mouse, gopher, chipmonk, or weasel on an
individual basis.  This gives the cat a tremendous advantage in becoming
feral, and leaves the feral ferret sniffing for kibble.
 
Lastly, in all carnivores, some hunting behaviors are learned.  The cat must
learn the killing bite, for example.  Put ferrets in cages for a few
generations, and the learned hunting behaviors are lost.  That is a major
problem in the black-footed ferret program; the learned hunting behaviors
were forgotten in just a few generations of captivity.
 
So with the combination of hunting instincts lost through captivity and
husbandry, imprinting on kibbled foots, and inability to compete against
better predators, it is inconcievable that ferrets can go feral anywhere,
and a miracle they did in New Zealand.  The special circumstances that
existed in NZ do not apply any where else in the world!!
 
There will be a quiz tomorrow. Be prepared.
 
Bob C with mom and sans ferts.
[Posted in FML issue 1980]