Several posters to the net have offered the theory that the sound of an
infant crying causes a ferret to become "abnormally stimulated" because such
a sounding may be painful to the ferret's sense of hearing.  It may hurt
it's ears.
 
Well, this is a possibility I suppose.  However, I'd be inclined to go
along with that theory if the babe's crying sound was loud and in close
approximation to the ferret.  It seems to make sense that ear pain from a
sound would be more likely to occur were the sound loud and closeby, rather
than low volume and distant.
 
It has been my experience of late that the "aggressive/attack mode" of the
ferret was stimulated by a 2-day old infant crying some 30 to 40 feet
distant from the ferret as well as nearby.  The baby was at the opposite end
of a 2-bedroom apartment; as far away from the ferret as it could possibly
be and still be in the same apartment.  Also please consider that if a sound
was painful to an animal, would it go toward that sound, or would it try to
run as far away as possible from the painful sound?  Does it not make sense
to you that the animal would distance itself as far as possible from the
cause of its pain?
 
Domestication is in animals a lengthy process, is it not?  Seen quoted that
it took human pressure over some number of years to domesticate the wild
ferret.  Was it 2,000 years ago that the Egyptians managed this feat?  You'd
not be far wrong to call this domestication process evolution under
pressure.  The behaviorial pressure to domesticate was applied by humans to
serve their own purposes, not that of the ferret.  Humans forced change on
the animal organism for their benefit, pure and simple.
 
My point here, plain and simple, is that humans, animals, insects, bacteria,
viruses, and perhaps even prions do evolve (change) over time for the simple
reason that they are driven by some unseen, unmeasurable "Life" force to
survive.  Survival is the only game in town.
 
Now, if the ferret can be "pressue changed," or "pressure evolved" to their
current state of development, is it possible that "pressure evolvement"
could go the other way as well?  Is evolution a one-way street?  If XXX
evolves to XXXX , is it impossible for XXXX to devolve or reverse-evolve to
XXX, or back to its original state?  If you say, no it's not possible, pray
tell us why?
 
Is it just too wild a speculative horror for all you ferret freaks (and I'm
one too) that the ferret is sending us a signal that we don't want to see?
The signal is that sudden aggressive and possibly attack behavior stimulated
quite easily in the modern ferret by prey sound is evidence that something
is "Rotten in Denmark?" Is the "wildness" in the ferret lying very close to
the surface and only hidden by a sheer veneer of domestication?  And here's
the clincher: With "wildness" so near the surface, just how much devolvement
(backwards evolution) will it take for a pair of ferrets to revert out of a
population of 100,000 or so, say over a period of 1,000 years?
 
Submitted by Ferret Endowment for Research, Rehabilitation, Education, &
Training Society, NorthWest, aka   F  E  R  R  E  T  S  NW,  Edward
Lipinski, Director and Frettchenlustbarkeitsfuerher, who shouts at you:
Frettchen Vergnuegen!
[Posted in FML issue 2256]