Yes, ferrets do devote a lot of their brain size to odor.
 
In relation to this:
>From what we know about odors being important to ferrets, it follows
>that they should be able to detect and differentiate quite a few subtle
>differences in odor that other species who do NOT have such large
>processing areas in the brain cannot.  Therefore, I would conclude that
>the ferret uses a great deal of its brain to identify and interpret
>odors it detects.
 
There is a really cool neurological case which Oliver Sacks wrote.  I
can not recall what happened to the young man's brain -- injury, disease,
whatever -- just that it was a brain problem.  A young man suddenly
became much more aware of odors.  By much more I mean MUCH.  He could
tell who had been in a room something like 20 minutes before, for
example.  He found that the result of having so much olfactory stimulus
all the time (since smell in much more like hearing than sight in that
it is always there; you can't turn away like you can with your eyes) was
that he could not really plan ahead -- there simply were way too many
current distractions.  After the enhanced ability went away he was once
again able to plan ahead.  The upshot was that the treating neurologists
arrived at the conclusion that the human brain has the ability to smell
at incredible levels but our brain design may actively block that
ability.
 
>When I did a Medline search on Friday, I got more than 3000 hits on the
>search word *ferret.*  To find out how to use Medline, contact me.
 
Also really marvelous is Hubmed, a variant of Pubmed:
http://www.pmbrowser.info/
which has links not only to abstracts, but in some cases to complete
articles, and some neat search features for related articles or articles
by the same authors, and more.  It's a fine tool.
 
Dave wrote:
>The ferret camp needs to make this issue broader than ferrets, it has
>to be about reforming Fish and Game, making government receptive to the
>people.
 
YES!  There is a real opening here to get in stuff about how much money
has been wasted by your F&G -- and it's not just in-state.  I don't know
how much of this is still going on but I was told years ago by F&G people
in at least four New England states that the only state worse than
California for sending out reams and reams of UNSOLICITED material and
publications pushing that state's own F&G views was Florida.  Again, I
don't know if this is still so, but when you consider that there are 50
states and then the protectorates and so on this likely amounts to a LOT
of money.  Imagine how useful that would be in a newspaper article if it
is still going on?
[Posted in FML issue 4225]