Most of the on-line refs which people provided on telling that ferrets
are in Carnivora rather than Rodentia had one or more of three weaknesses
that make them less useful to those trying to influence non-ferret
people: 1.  from a non-scientific and/or partisan source, 2.  no mention
of domestic ferrets, no differentiation of domestic ferrets from weasels.
 
I liked this one of those that assorted people provided the best:
http://www.geobop.com/Mammals/Carnivora/Mustelidae/
 
Here is why: National Geographic is widely respected, it has a write up
and in the write up it clearly states that domestic ferrets are in the
grouping, and calls them "domestic".
 
>Polecats and ferrets are grassland animals. Ironically, the domestic
>ferrets that are so popular as pets are descended from Old World
>polecats, not the New World black-footed ferret. Preying mostly on
>prairie dogs, the black-footed ferret is now among the rarest of
>mammals.
 
Personally, when a town had to be fought here Joyce's (Dr. Beer) page
on ferret art history was VERY important because it had so many old
paintings of people snuggling up to ferrets.  Wish I hadn't lost her
URL.  It also showed the tamer sides of hunting with them which the site
http://home.worldonline.nl/~wfu/ferret.html
 
also showed nicely so I was glad to find that one due to folks'
suggestions and to also find that they have
http://home.worldonline.nl/~wfu/drawings.html
which has some (perhaps about half?) of the same art work that she
displayed, plus one I haven't seen used before .
 
Art works can be useful for increasing acceptance.  I'm looking forward
to Bob putting up the list of art URLs when he is done.
 
I haven't finished going through the URLs folks put up and hope that
more are put up!  I just was so pleased by these that i wanted to say
something now.
[Posted in FML issue 3962]