_Ferret brownies?_
 
Hi --
This may sound silly, but I was wondering: given the extremely high
intelligence and obvious sentience of ferrets -- not identical with ours,
but clearly they are as aware of their environment as we are, in the same
basic ways, and react to things emotionally the same way we do, not to
mention their high IQs (this doesn't necessarily mean common sense, of
course <G>) -- and their general size and build, is it possible that in
those parts of the world where weasels and their cousins have always lived
that these may have given rise to legends of brownies, leprachauns and
related sprites?  Many _ferrets_ look so much like what brownies are
supposed to look like you have to wonder.  They have hands -- they use their
front feet the way we use hands, and have opposable thumbs.  They take joy
and delight in things as we do; they grieve at the same things we would, in
the same way -- they even sob loudly, weep when they grieve over the loss of
a mate or on discovery that they have been maimed (as in a recent post to
FML).  "Have we not hands?  Have we not feet?  If you cut us, do we not
bleed?" It would be very easy to conclude they are people -- tiny people,
very clever ones, who are prone to theft and mischief but also potentially
very affectionate, just like brownies, elves and so on are supposed to be.
 
So many of the beings with which we share our planetary home are sentient.
Elephants not only paint, but each will sign her own signature, one that
doesn't change, to every painting she turns out.  Ferrets and elephants and
cats and dogs grieve, they weep and sob and sometimes will pine away and die
at the loss of a loved one.  Bears will go into raptures over the beauty of
a sunset.  Pigs make excellent bodyguards, drovers of small livestock,
security guards, companions.  Whales and dolphins are legendary for their
high intelligence and their clearly high esthetic and emotional responses to
life and their surroundings.  Apes, ferrets, and other non-human beings
sometimes even go mad or bad the way we occasionally do, developing
horrifyingly sadistic or predatory natures.  Clearly they _are_ people,
though not human.  Their souls -- psyches, even in just the strict
behavioral and neuroendocrinological sense -- are like ours, and their
intellects are possibly all as great as ours or greater, at leat potentially
so.  So it is very possible that over the millennia ferrets and other
mustelids, who look and act exactly like sprites of all kinds are supposed
to, provided the basis for the legends of such "fabulous" beings.
 
If anyone has more information on this subject, e.g., on the anthropology,
historical studies and so on of (a) human/non-human interactions and (b) the
legends of the "wee folk" around the world that could shed some more light
on this, please let me know.  Thanks, Yael
 
Dragwyla
[Posted in FML issue 1672]