I had originally planned this to be a 3-parter, but got so much mail asking
I discuss ferret safety issues that I have added a part regarding ferret
biting issues.  Sorry to bore you even more.  We've gone through a short
list of how the wild polecat and the domesticated ferret are similar, and
how they are different.  Neither list was inclusive, just a taste of the
similarities and differences which help to lead up to the question- are
ferrets dangerous?
 
I did a brief but intensive search of the literature about six months ago on
that very subject.  Space is limited in this post, so I won't report most of
it, but essentially, you can find numerous references on pet attacks
regarding dog VS human as far back as written records go, even excluding
those reports of war dogs trained to attack people.  Limiting the search to
the last century, reports of children and adults contending with nasty mutts
is commonplace; the severity of the problem is so well ingrained in our
society we have cottage industry of postman-dog jokes.  On average, between
10-20 people will be killed by dogs each year, mostly children.  Dogs are
renowned for slaughtering wildlife and smaller domestic pets; papers have
been written on the subject for more than a hundred years.  About the only
group that has tried to contend with the problem are hunters, angry with
losing deer to wild dog packs, sort of a "I can kill them but you can't"
mentality.
 
What about the ferret?  Ferrets have been domesticated for more than 2500
years, yet the only two recorded instances where they were implicated in
deaths occurred this last decade.  Both also involved dogs to some extent,
and certainly parental negligence, so it is hard to say the degree to which
the ferret was responsible; certainly some.  But taking the assumption that
both deaths were caused by ferrets, that makes the statistic something like
a single death per thousand years.  Now, perhaps there are other deaths, but
none reported in searchable databanks.
 
The problem is basically the news media.  A dog kills a child (a child
waiting for a school bus was killed by a dog last spring in Missouri) and
local news report it.  But it is common enough that it never makes it to the
national media.  A ferret kills a child back in late 1980's and it is
*still* being reported by the news media, BECAUSE it is so unusual.  The end
result is the public's perception is more ferrets kill babies that dogs,
although the score in the USA for the last 300 years is ferrets-1,
dogs-1000s.  (Here is a cool statistic for you; more people died from pet
snake attacks than *ever* recorded for ferrets; babies have been crushed and
swallowed by boas.  Hell, more children have been killed by lightning in the
last year or so than by ferrets in recorded history.) Both ferret-related
deaths were babies, and the cause of death in both instances was severe
bleeding.  In the case in London, the baby was left at home while the
parents drank in a pub, and while a neglected ferret was involved, the
neglected dogs probably did the killing, or at least helped.  In the case in
Oregon, the baby was in the front room while the parents were in the
bedroom.  Ok, a neglected ferret chews a baby until it bleeds to death, and
the parents, a room away with the door open, never investigate the baby
crying, and a chewed baby certainly cries.  Its hard to say who was more
responsible, the ferret or the parents.  Dogs were also involved, but how
much was never investigated.
 
The bottom line is, any animal is dangerous around babies and the larger the
pet, the more deadly.  As for the argument about ferret disfiguring
children, go to a medical library and pick up a book on plastic surgery for
pet bites.  A new book ("Forensic Taphonomy") devotes quite a large amount
of space to dogs, lethal dog bites, and dogs who have eaten their owners.
Dogs disfigure thousands of people every year, and that NEVER makes the
newspapers or Good Morning America.  One last thing on this; if you look at
the things written about ferret bites, you can find a lot of stuff.  But
when you look close at the reports themselves, you find the same stories
being reported time after time.  A doctor once wrote about three ferret bite
incidents in a medical journal, calling ferrets a menace to children,
completely ignoring the thousands of children disfigured by dogs in the same
period of time, and he has been cited scores of times.  Not so regarding
dogs; only once did I see the same incident reported in two different
sources and it was from the same author.
 
Remember the nature of the ferret?  Concider this; if you were hunting
rabbits to feed your family, and using ferrets to do it, what would be the
ideal ferret?  One that likes and bonds with humans, very inquisitive,
chases rabbits without killing them, and doesn't bite the hand that feeds
it.  Sound familiar?  Ferrets have been so well bred not to bite that
numerous accounts exist in which polecats were hybridized with ferrets to
*increase* their hunting instincts.  Sounds like domestication worked.
 
Statistics show ferret bite rates to be lower than in dogs or cats.  This
statistic is often is dispute because so many bites go unreported.  That may
be true.  When a dog latches on your hand, you run to the clinic and get
patched up.  Stitches, a shot, a finger sewn back in place.  When a ferret
bites to the bone, you run for a bandaid.  It would have to be a rare
instance when a ferret bite required medical attention.  So while the number
of bites reported might be higher (per bite) with dogs, that is because they
are typically far more severe or injurious.  Lots of dogs bites go
unreported as well, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand a
80 lb shepard clamping down on your lip will do a bit more damage than a 2
lb ferret.
 
Can a ferret inflict nasty damage?  Sure, one would be stupid to deny it,
but the overall extent of damage is always less than with a dog because of
the size of the mouth and teeth.  Ferret jaws and teeth are designed to kill
small rodents, dog teeth are designed to take down elk and moose.  Taking
into account 2500 years of history, size and nature, ferrets are a FAR safer
pet than a dog or a cat.
 
Bob C and 20 MO Woozels
[Posted in FML issue 2085]