Excuse me, but was this necessary, especially done anonymously?

 Subject: Putorius, the odius pedant
>
>Ever seen a least weasel in Ca.? I have; twice. Tiny little things.
>When you get your nose out of a textbook, go out and look some time.

It struck me as needlessly nasty.

The biologist was addressing the MISidentification of animals.
Honestly, while people who are USED to ferrets will spot many
differences (but do not always), including size, the reality is
that many others will not.

I can't recall if Bill was here back ages ago shortly after BFFs
appeared when Steve and I were in close communication with the WY F&G
people who first saved Black Footed Ferrets and got the ball rolling
for others to also do so even better, but one thing that they talked
about were the misidentifications that began coming in after the
rediscovery of the species. Some of the things people THOUGHT were BFFs
were totally unrelated animals that were of a range of sizes (including
small rodents). I can't recall which animal it was but one of the
critters someone thought was a BFF was the size of a mid-sized dog. It
wasn't a western coyote but I can't recall what it actually was.

Through the years I have heard of a number of animals wrongly thought
to be ferrets by people who spoke with too little knowledge, from a
stray siamese cat (no joke) to mink (very often) to an otter (once)
to weasels (often) to a shrew, to a squirrel, and more. So, the
biologist's supposition was entirely within the realm of the possible.

Heck, if you check past news stories you will even find one about a CA
F&G employee shooting a large house cat because that person thought the
domestic cat was a cougar. (Even more sadly, I kid you not.)

So, why take the minutes for a nasty anonymous comment when the
supposition is consistent with past misidentifications? There are more
constructive needs to use one's time.

Anyway, hopefully, this post will give people an idea of how way, way,
way off the mark some misidentifications of ferrets can have have been.
Hey, I've heard a person insist that ferrets look like monkeys... It's
hard to imagine how incredibly wrong a lot of "identifications" can be.
Then again, most cars look a lot alike to me...

We are all always learning ( Maybe I've even one day learn better to
tell cars apart.) and maybe today someone learned how off ferret
misidentifications too often are.

Sukie (not a vet)

Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html
http://www.miamiferret.org/
http://www.ferrethealth.msu.edu/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html
all ferret topics:
http://listserv.ferretmailinglist.org/archives/ferret-search.html

[Posted in FML 6404]