Q: "I have two questions....why is the ferret's eye teeth so long....do they
    have instincts for hunting?"
 
A: Eye won't lie to ye, they hunt socks because of instink.
 
Ferrets do have long fangs, don't they?  It a trait of weasels in general,
and is similar to what is sometimes seen in viverids (civets, mongeese).
The answer is simple--it relates to what wild weasels hunt and how they
kill it.
 
Weasels, including polecats, black-footed ferrets, and even our domesticated
furbutts, generally hunt animals that can defend themselves.  If you don't
believe it, just pick up a wild rabbit sometime.  They can bite through your
finger and rip your skin to shreds before you can say "Lepus californicus!"
Rodent teeth are like knife-sharp chisels, and they can do serious damage to
the unwary predator.  Also, most weasels are sort of small, almost none top
5-6 pounds, so their prey can be as large (or larger) than themselves.
Makes for dangerous hunting.
 
That is where the long fron teeth come in (fangs, eye teeth, canines).  They
are long for a specific reason; to pierce either the base of the skull or
the cervical vertebrae and cause instantaneous death.  Large predators, like
lions or dogs, will kill by bites to the throat, or by general
dismemberment.  The animals can (and do) struggle for some time, and many
instances have been recorded where the lion was killed or seriously injured
by the prey.  I have records where grizzley bears were killed by bison,
where mt.  lions were killed by deer, where coyotes were killed by marmots,
and so on.  Polecats and hunting ferrets have been killed by rabbits and the
like.
 
The killing bite of the ferret, like all weasels, is instinctive.  They do
it all the time to each other while mock hunting.  They even do it to my
thumb webbing from time to time.  Its the bite to the back of the neck,
often accompanied by a side-to-side shaking or twisting motion.  In play,
nothing really happens, except some poop might fly, or someone might poof.
But in real life, the bite and shake is designed to drive the long canine
throught the layers of skin, muscle, fat and bone, directly into the back of
the skull, crushing the brain stem.  Better yet, the tooth will cut the
spinal cord.  In either case, death is intantaneous and the animal is no
longer a physical threat to the predator.  In some cases, even though the
brain might be scrambled or the spinal cord cut, the prey can live for quite
some time (like pithed frogs some of us older biology majors can recall).
Older reports of excavated polecat burrows often mention handfulls of pithed
frogs, stacked for future consumption.
 
While the bite is instictive, hunting behaviour is not.  At least a major
part is learned.  I can give a lot of reasons why ferrets cannot go feral in
CaCa Land (Lant if you listen to Lawrence Welk) and one of the best is
actually two different things rolled into one.  Ferrets have to be *taught*
how to hunt, and they have the be *imprinted* on prey odors before they will
recognize it as food.
 
In the first part, on of the greatest difficulties in reintroducing the
black footed ferret into the wild has been its loss of hunting skills.  This
is why Siberian polecats (_Mustela_eversmannii_) were brought over; in the
hopes of teaching the younger BBF how to hunt.  There has been limited
success to date, but if a non-domesticated bbf cannot establish itself after
captivity because it forgot how to hunt, why does the Ca Ca Flush and
Gestapo think differently for the domesticated ferret?  They cannot claim it
is because they are different species, because the trait has been noticed in
mustelids in general.  A plan to raise fishers for reintroduction failed
because although they recognized food (correctly imprinted) they didn't know
how to hunt that food.  They starved to death in a land filled with food
they recognized.
 
The second part is ferrets imprint on food odors while young.  It is rare
for ferrets to accept new smells as food after tha first 6 months, and
almost impossible after the first year.  They could have the most nutritious
food in the world in front of their little pink noses, and they still starve
to death before they will try it.
 
Some CaCa Flush and Gesptapo apologists might argue this is modern
knowledge, to new for it to have made a difference.  Poop.  And lots of it.
I have read the early ferret books, and ferretiers have known about how
difficult it is for a ferret to live in the wild for more than a century.
Carnegie (c1890s) wrote in "Ferrets and Ferreting" that lost ferrets soon
die because of starvation or predation.  Identical sentiments were expressed
by Brodie (c1960s), Usinger (c1960s), Barkley (1896), Davies (1907), Everitt
(1897), Drury (1927), and even by BBF authors like Jane Duden's 1990 book on
the bbf.  The information is there, they have just ignored it, and I have
cited only a handfull of the ferret books I have in my possession that say
similar things.
 
Miller, Brian, Dean Biggins, Chris Wemmer, Roger Powell, Lou Hanebury,
Deborah Horn and Astrid Vargas.  1990 Development of survival skills in
captive-raised Siberian polecats (_Mustela_eversmanni_) 1.  Locating prey.
"Journal of Ethology" 8:89-94.
 
P.89: "These observations indicate that captive-raised mustelids have at
least a rudimentary innate capacity to kill prey.  For a captive-raised
mustelid, however, locating prey in a natural situation may be different.
Two nine-month-old hand raised fishers killed prey on first exposure in
captivity, but starved to death after release into the wild because they
were unable to search for food successfully (citation)."
 
Next the CaCa Flush and Gestapo will be telling us that their job is
protecting wildlife.  Apparently, The Sierra Club and the Audobon Society
believes them.  Someone should slip them a note that says, "The desire for
hunting revenues is not conductive to species preservation and the CaCa
Flush and Gestapo is only worried that someone might use the ferrets to
hunt, rather than a real fear ferrets would go feral."
 
Bob C and 20 MO Spine Snappers
[Posted in FML issue 2210]