Hi, this is Susie Lee speaking for myself and Wes from the Pensacola
Ferret and Dove Sanctuary.
 
Sometimes a ferret will shed extra tears if its affected by a head cold,
or allergies afflicting their eyes or an irritant making them "tear".
However when there is emotional involvment you can't miss it.  They show
each of their emotions with their entire behavior.
 
You don't have to ascribe human emotions to ferrets, they will plainly
display their own emotions, including anxiety (searching frantically,
all over the house, for a missed cagemate) and grief (I've heard two
different ferrets who have lost a long-time cagemate crying aloud, most
of the others whom this has happened to display great sadness) which
can sometimes spiral down into a deep depression at the loss of a close
buddy-ferret.
 
You already see their displays of happiness and joy in movement and
expression.  Ferrets are highly empathic and will react to your moods
in sympathy with and for you, not unlike the same manner in which
close-friend dogs and cats do this.  Carnivores have more highly
developed brains and also more sensitized responses to the way others
are feeling, much due to the mothers' need to comunicate more complicated
intructions to her progeny than herbivore-mothers do.  That's much of the
reason why ferrets , dogs, and cats learn so fast, adapt so well, and
also are already so sensitive.
 
Of course, the other critters have their range of emotions, too; but in
carnivores like ferrets, that range is finer-tuned (like the difference
between a kazoo and a full-stringed piano.) Humans and other ape-species
are just even-more-complicated...mostly 'cause that's how we "inflict"
one another...complexly.  Too bad more of us can't accept some of the
other omnivores attitudes, like the easy-going bear.  Well, some of us
do, at that. :)
 
(see most of our fur and feathered gang here...
http://www.angelfire.com/theforce/ferret_rescuer/index.html
[Posted in FML issue 4179]