I remember seeing this in an article several years ago and being
surprised by it as well. Then I started thinking about the numbers
individual ferret owners often have and realized that even 1/5 the
number of dog owners would probably be all it takes to qualify ferrets
as third ranking pet. One person owning 5 dogs/cats is far more unusual
than one person owning 5 ferrets and most of us will have had many
different ferrets over the course of an average dog/cat lifespan. So
in a 12 year snapshot a dog/cat owner may have gotten one or two pets,
whereas a ferret owner could easily have gotten 10 to 15. I would
certainly agree that there are far fewer ferret households out there
than there are bird,fish, rabbit, etc. households. However, because it
would seem it's the number of ferrets as pets, rather than the number
of people as owners that's really the statistic, it made a lot more
sense to me.

~Debbi Walcker~

[Posted in FML 7342]