>Deaf people range from brilliant to mentally handicapped, just like
>everyone else.  I'm sure the intelligence of deaf ferrets would have the
>same range.
 
No doubt.  One thing has nothing to do with the other (deafness and
intelligence).  What my original post had said, was that I found two
sources (I forget which ones now) that stated that in humans and some
animal species it was found that intelligence was mostly avererage, and
sometimes below average.  It said it was unusual to have genius level
intelligence with some forms of WS.  And THAT is what I was getting at.
I was curious.  I was curious how others were percieving (key word here)
not there "deaf ferrets intelligence", but their WS ferrets that are also
deaf.  I wanted to see if people anecdotally saw what I had read about.
Thats what this originally was all about.  It was just a question, a
topic thrown out there for interesting discussion.
 
Incidently I'm not so surprised over the range of intelligence that
people percieve.  I"m surprised that very few rate their WS deaf ferrets
as average..... while they would rate their hearing ferrets average many
times.  I was surprised to see no pattern too other than the huge spectrum
of observations that I found.  Of course there are many many human,
psychological factors to consider.  I just thought it would be fun.  I
think we all realize the differences between our deaf ferrets missing
cues, etc, and the lack of problem solving, etc..  I think we all thought
it was great fun and interesting to find that many of our WS deaf ferrets
do show similar social issues that deaf people may encounter.  :)
 
Wolfy
 
Please visit:
http://www.geocities.com/wolfysluv/
for information on ferret deafness:
http://www.geocities.com/wolfysluv/deaf.html
[Posted in FML issue 3797]