PART TWO PART TWO
 
7. "Ferrets are too stupid to find their way home."
Most ferrets that escape are never found, so on the surface this appears
true.  However, ferrets are same sex exclusionists and have a very strong
instinct to disperse.  What humans see as 'being lost', ferrets see as
dispersal.  They are simply following their instincts to find a home
away from other ferrets of the same sex.  Also, there is a bit of
"uncontrollable curiosity" in play as well.  Between the two, an escaped
ferret is hard to find, regardless of intelligence.
 
8. "Ferret are vicious biters."
Compared to a pissed German Shepherd?  Ferrets are pretty small, so they
have tiny, sharp teeth; it takes little force for them to break skin and
draw blood.  There may be no intent for harm, but tiny, sharp teeth on
soft skin can result in a crimson boo-boo.  Statistically, ferrets are
among the safest pets a human can own.
 
9. "Ferrets are prone to cancers."
ALL older mammals dogs, cats, humans, rabbits, pigs, rats, whatever, are
prone to cancers.  Many cancers are triggered by injury to DNA, which is
cumulative over time.  The older you get, the more chance of cancer you
have.  Ferrets do seem to have a predisposition towards adrenal tumors and
lymphoma, but most show up after the ferret is biologically old (4 to 5
years).  The chance of a young ferret developing a cancer is about equal
to that experienced by other species.  If you checked out the listings in
veterinarian libraries regarding genetic disease in domesticated animals,
you would discover ferrets actually have a very low rate of genetic
disease.  You should read what can go wrong with dogs or cats.  Poor
creatures.
 
10. "Ferrets stink."
Ferrets have body odor, just as do dogs, cats, people, birds and any other
living being.  Ferrets just smell different than what is accustomed by some
people who are used to stinky old dogs, so the odor is sometimes considered
an unpleasant one.  I personally find it favorable to "wet dog smell" or,
"tom cat spray."  A healthy, neutered ferret, on a balanced diet, has little
objectionable odor, and probably stinks less than your uncle's armpits.
 
11. "Ferrets aren't as smart as dogs or cats."
There are at least a half-dozen recent books on animal intelligence, and
not one would agree with that statement.  The scientists cannot even
agree WHAT is instinct and WHAT is intelligence, and without those basic
definitions, any comparisons would be invalid.  What has been found is that
if you consider problem solving as intelligence (many animal behaviorists
do), then ferrets rank above cats or dogs, into the range of small
primates.  However, if you consider memory to be intelligence (few
behaviorists do), then ferrets rank lower than dogs but above cats.  The
biggest hurdle to get over is the one of mode of communication.  A dog has
almost human visual and auditory modes of communication, so some humans
anthropomorphize the ability to use sound to communicate as a sign of
intelligence.  Ferrets evolved as same-sex exclusionists, and have little
need for advanced auditory communications skills.  Instead, they use body
language, a few vocalizations and LOTS of olfactory (smell) clues.  Ferrets
aren't dumber; they simply do things differently, and it doesn't take a lot
of brains to figure that one out.
 
12. "Breeding ferrets to polecats strengthens the breed by eliminating poor
     genes."
 
This sounds like population genetics taught by creation scientists.
Ferrets, like pre-1800 cats (when fancy variety breeding programs began to
create new "breeds"), look very much like their polecat progenitors BECAUSE
the people doing the domestication wanted animals that did exactly the same
thing polecats did, but were more user friendly.  So, rather than selecting
for body, color or size differences, they selected for BEHAVIOR.  What this
means is most physical characteristics of ferrets are shared by polecats,
and interbreeding will do little to change those allele frequencies because
they are already so close to each other.  What is will and does change
is behavior.  Dozens of papers document ferret-polecat hybrids are more
stressed, have more fearfulness, are more temperamental and have are more
likely to bite than non-hybridized ferrets.  You are simply breeding a
more dangerous ferret.
 
Put simply, if the idea of crossing a ferret to a polecat is to dilute
the bad genes, it may partially work with an individual litter, but at
population genetics levels, it will have little or no impact because those
"good genes" ALREADY exist in the population.  Gene frequencies are hard to
shift once stabilized, and introducing "new genes' which already exist in
the population has no real effect.  But what it does do is to shift the
frequency of those genes which code for behavior, making the offspring less
docile or human friendly.  It is safer and better for the animals to simply
remove ferrets with bad genes from the breeding population than it is to
hybridize them with wild animals.  Don't lose a mile to gain an inch.
 
Bob C and 15 Mo' Poledawg Progenitors
[Posted in FML issue 3250]