Q:"Do ferrets have special muscles in their necks that people don't have?"
 
A: Only if you are a pencil-necked geek, a grit-eatin' freak, a
   scum-sucking peahead with a lousy physique.  In other words, a CaCa
   Fishing Gestapo agent.
 
Do you know what animal many beginning medical students use to understand
the human musculature system?  Cats, and lately, mink.  They generally
start out with these animals because human cadavers are expensive to
obtain, maintain and dispose of, and a cat or mink teaches basically the
same thing so it is the better choice with newbee anatomists.  The point
here is mammalian muscular systems are essentially the same, and the only
differences tend to be those that are adaptations to specific changes in
the animal's body.  For example, the muscles of the human hand look quite
different compared to those of deer because the deer has an extensively
modified hand, but besides simplification and modification, they are
*still* essentially the same muscle groups.
 
The ferret's neck muscles are very similar to those of humans with a few
slight modifications related to differences in body mass and proportions.
It takes a lot of muscle to hold a head up at the end of a long neck, which
is why ferrets have football-player type necks (hold a 20 lb weight next to
your chest, then at arm's length to see the difference).  Those thick,
heavy muscles run down the entire back and are responsible for the ferret's
ability to leap and jump (and land) like they do.  One big difference
between people and ferts is that ferrets, like most carnivores and
ungulates, usually lack clavicles (if they have them, they are very tiny
slivers of bone), which allows the front limbs to have a much wider range
of motion.  But in general, except for proportional sizes and slight
differences in shape, ferret neck muscles are essentially the same as in
people.  And they do like to have those muscles rubbed from time to time.
 
The neck and back muscles are a very good indicator of the condition of
your ferret.  Because of the importance of locomotion in a carnivore--if
you can't run, you can't eat--any wasting of these muscles is an clear
danger sign, albeit a late one.  It usually means the ferret has already
lost the major portion of it's body fat, and the muscles of the body are
wasted and reduced.  This usually happens when the body is starved for
energy and the muscle loss is the body eating its own muscle to keep going.
How much muscle loss is too much?  If you can feel not just the tops of the
spinal processes (the bumps along the top of the back of the ferret), but
also some of the sides, your ferret has lost too much muscle.
 
There are a lot of reasons for extensive muscle loss, ranging from lack
of exercise to old age to starvation to the after-effects of ECE, so I
recommend an immediate visit to the vet if you begin to suspect muscle
wastage.  Try to do this prior to feeding the ferret lots of fatty or
sugary foods in an attempt to boost weight, because the reason may be a
serious medical condition, and those foods may cause more injury than cure.
I know of one case where an attempt to boost a ferret's weight was made,
resulting in the fat-soluble poisoning of the ferret.  Try to see the vet
prior to dietary treatment so you can rule out other serious problems.
 
Q:"How many bones do ferrets have in their necks?"
 
A: Before or after eating chicken?
 
Same as us, 7.  Unless you count the bones in the base of the tongue, then
you need to add more depending on the species, but assuming you meant the
neck vertebrae, then the number is 7.  They are just proportionally longer
per vertebrae than ours.  Just because the ferret is a mammal, it doesn't
mean it *HAS* to have 7 neck vertebrae.  While that is generally true, lots
of mammals have less than 7, and a few have more.
 
Ferrets have the general mustelid vertebrae plan of 7 cervical, 15 thoracic
(sometimes 14), 5 (sometimes 6) lumbar, 3 sacral, and 18 (between 17 and
22) caudal vertebrae, expressed as C7 - T15 - L5 - S3 - Cd18.  The
cervicals are found in the neck, the thoracic in the back, the lumbars in
the lower back, the sacral in the pelvis, and the caudal in the tail.
 
While securely fastened to each other, the vertebrae have very loose
interconnections, allowing for freedom of movement; important in an animal
that can curl up inside a coffee cup or u-turn in a rat hole.  Starting
on the base of the skull, running down the tops of all the vertebrae and
ending at tail is a strong and thick elastic ligament.  When a ferret
"humps" it's back, like when running, the ligament is stretched like a
rubber band, storing energy.  When the ferret relaxes those "humping"
muscles and uses their "straightening" muscles, the ligament acts just
like a rubber band that snaps back on your finger.  When the "snap" occurs,
it takes a lot less energy to straighten the back and it happens faster.
Because of this ligament, what is seen as an inchworm style of
locomotion--if viewed in slow-mo--becomes a barely visible streak in
real-time action.
 
Bob C and 20 MO' Fertopracters
[Posted in FML issue 2590]