First, thanks for the cards and letters regarding the recent car bangup
experienced by Ann and myself.  Ann is doing fine, and I just have a lousy
headache.  I can't sleep because of it, so I am sending this real-time; like
4am.  Good thing I have early classes, eh?
 
Q: If unaltered female ferrets are not bred when they come in heat, they
usually become sick and die.  This seems to be a very foolish way to
reproduce.  Is this trait shared by any mustelid cousins?  Did early ferret
domesticators purposefully or accidentally breed for such behavior?  Or was
it a chance mutation that by the vagaries of genetics and distribution
became prevalent?  What sort of social behaviors could this biological
behavior lead to?
 
A: Gosh, this could be the study for an entire semester.  Let me see if I
can do it in less than 100 lines.  Nope.  Next question.
 
OK, I'll try.  Actually, this is a common enough trait for many mammals,
especially those that are typically solitary.  And it makes fine
evolutionary sense if you think about it.  Consider the major objective of a
species is reproduction (even with humans as any teenager will testify).
First it has to survive, meaning avoiding being eaten while eating others,
until it reaches reproductive age.  After the magic moment, the animal still
has to survive until the kids start watching M-TV and forcing normally
pacifist parents to consider the purchase of a shotgun and lots of rock
salt.  To do this, the beastie fills a rather specific niche within the
environment.  Sometimes they evolved playing solitaire.
 
The typical/general mustelid pattern is a patchwork of solitary males
overlapping a similar patchwork of solitary females.  The larger the
territory, the more oportunities to meet several members of the opposite
sex.  Kind of like having a BMW and a gold card.  Prolonged estrous, or
being in heat for a _realllly_ long time can insure the highest number of
close encounters of the mustelid kind with multiple mates, increase the
opportunities for a close encounter of any kind, or a combination of both.
 
In truth, there has to be either a net gain in animals despite the lost of
the occasion female, or at least a break-even point, or the species would
become extinct.  Since it isn't so, then it must be either a good thing, or
at least something that isn't bad.  In other words, there is an advantage to
these females having a prolonged estrous, or it wouldn't be there.
 
As for the social stuff, it greatly explains the dominance patterns of the
typical mustelid.  Many animals, such as dogs, form a basic linear dominance
pattern where there is a head dog , and strung out like beads behind him are
all the little pups.  Not so in ferrets.  But they still form dominance
structures.  In the polecat/ferret case, one beastie might be dominant over
several others, while dominated by another group.  To really complicate
things, some of the ferts at the bottom of one list may be at the top of
another.  Kind of like a patchwork of dominance.  Very similar to what would
be found in the wild, if the ferts were allowed to form territories.  Kind
of like Wild Kingdom in your front room.
 
Our pet ferrets still follow these ancestral traits (estrous and dominance)
and would be solitary except we maintain them in a "family" setting.  Of
course, they are not really related in some cases, but they come to regard
each other as siblings rather than competitors.  Hence the play fighting,
mock mouth biting, neck shaking, etc.  New introductions are often treated
as territorial interlopers, hence the terrible fighting sometimes displayed.
I also think much of the fighting between males and females is due to
neutering, which kind of evens out the playing field so to speak.  The males
would normally ignore the female, but because of hormonal changes as a
result of neutering, they appear as "non-female," and have to be
territorially excluded.
 
BTW, mustelids use poop to define territory.  The reason for the "drag
racing" after elimination is not to clean the butt, but to place the anal
glands in contact with the surface.  An olfactory signpost.  Want to see
alot of poop everywhere?  Add 5 ferrets to an established group of 14.  Each
and everyone will forget what the litter pan was for.  Land mine city.  Look
out!  Aww, blew his foot off, so to speak.
 
Now this is _very_ simplistic; like I said, this could be a full semester
class.  But I hope it helps.  At least I got to talk about sex.
 
Bob and the 19 Born-to-be-Poopinators.
[Posted in FML issue 1684]