I am officially back online, although it will take considerable time to
catch up on the older lists and the ton or so of email.  Forgive me if
any of my posts answer questions already answered.
 
[Private email]: "I was wondering if wild animals had broken bones and
survived?  Aren't they killed because of...their injuries? ... How do you
pay [vet costs] for all your ferrets?"
 
For some reason, this question reminded me of the Far Side comic where
the vet is walking through the horse ward, saying "shoot it" regardless
of what was wrong.  Down the line was one horse with wide eyes.
 
ALL wild animals, including polecats (the ferret progenitor) and feral
ferrets from New Zealand frequently break bones and survive.  I have
personally seen hundreds of examples, ranging from a healed white-tailed
deer humerus (broken by a bullet), to healed raccoon baculae, to a crushed
and healed opossum skull, to a crushed cougar pelvis, to even healed
fractures in ferrets.  Wild bears have a very high rate of healed
fractures; in some populations it may exceed 50%.  I think the healed
fracture rate in Goodall's chimps was around 10%, and the rate was 17%
in a population of pine martens from British Columbia that I had the
pleasure to study.  In the New Zealand feral ferrets I've looked at, the
healed fracture rate was about 8%, but that could hardly be taken as
accurate since many of the feral ferrets in that country are hunted,
trapped and poisoned, which probably skews the finding.
 
I strongly insist that IF you EVER suspect your ferret has a broken bone,
you seek a vet immediately and take their advice to heart.  The survival
rate of a wild animal with a broken bone depends on three basic factors,
collateral damage, immobility, and infection, but for pet ferrets, nearly
all broken bones are survivable.  If you do not seek treatment for your
ferret, then they become "in essence" the same as a wild animal, and will
have a much lower survival rate compared to ferrets getting treatment.  In
terms of collatoral damage, an injury damaging enough to break a bone often
(or usually) results in other injuries.  One thing I noticed when looking
at feral ferret skeletons was that there was a much higher rate of fracture
for the femur than the humerus.  However, once you realize that the head is
much closer to the humerus than to the femur, the difference in fracture
rates may be actually illustrating collateral damage; a hit to the shoulder
area may be also causing head injury, lowering survival rates, and
artificially elevating femur fracture rates in comparison.  The same danger
of collateral damage exists in the home environment; a ferret falling from
a bookshelf may show a broken femur, BUT it can have internal injuries to
the liver or spleen which would result in death if not treated promptly.
This is really important if the ferret was stepped on, where a broken limb
might be obvious, but the real danger is internal injuries.  If you suspect
a broken bone, assume there is collateral damage until proven otherwise.
[Posted in FML issue 3436]