I appreciate your interest in my study.  I would like to take this
opportunity to clarify what I want to accomplish with my study and how I am
going to do it.  I live in Columbus, Ohio were ferrets are illegal.  I am
not a ferret owner myself, so any insight you have would be appreciated.
 
According to my background research, the traits that I have emphasized in my
study are representative of the Mustelid family as a whole.  I have selected
published studies of the closest relatives to the domestic ferret as my
basis for comparison.  My feral subjects include: Mustela putorius (European
Polecat), Mustela eversmanni (Siberian Ferret), Mustela nigripes
(Black-Footed Ferret), and Mustela vison (Mink).  The questions' responses
are ranked as a scale- each behavior is scored as either more "feral" or
more "domestic." My aim is to examine to what extent domestic ferrets have
retained feral traits, although they may have been undesirable to breeders.
If these traits have been retained, why, and to what extent have they acted
upon the socialization of the ferret?  One of my questions is why do
domestic ferrets successfully coexist in overlapping territories when feral
Mustelids are solitary species?  As my study of mustelids progresses,
questions like this continue to puzzle me.  I hope that my research will
provide answers to these questions, while providing a valid dataset for
future studies.
 
Thanks again for your support,
Stephanie C. Vermillion
[Posted in FML issue 1480]