Heather wrote: >He told me that it really is a 50/50 shot.. I would hate to put >Eddie through all of that and him just die anyway.. 50/50?????????!!!!!! We never lost even one to surgery so far and have had ferrets in the family for 18 years. I can recall WAY BACK when the death rate in surgeries was 10% to 20% depending on surgeon and so on, but so much more is known now. WHAT ARE THE SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS WHICH CALL FOR SUCH NUMBERS? Is the adrenal growth secondary to lymphoma? Does the ferret have a serious heart condition? If there is not a special consideration then perhaps you might want to use the various resources available to find a vet more used to operating on and using anesthesia on ferrets. Please, also read and check out links from resources such as http://www.ferretdoctor.com, http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html, http://www.ferretcentral.org, and http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc . Be sure that pathology is done afterwards by a ferret-knowledgeable veterinary pathologist. Also, what type of fur loss is seen? What we've seen at home is that the ones with only tail loss have had skin disease, typically, but the ones which have lost seriously on body or head (sometimes with or without losing on tail) have had adrenal growths. Remember that we aren't vets, but do have long experience so take it for what it's worth, only. Nipples: well, just take a look around at a beach sometime. Males DO have nipples. They just usually don't have breasts and the glandular tissues develop greatly like they do in females. (Of course, that can happen, too, for a wide number of reasons from genetics apparently to smoking pot at an early age...) So, expect nipples; they aren't gender dependent in ferrets anymore than they are in humans. This question comes up about 1 to 3 times each year, BTW. [Posted in FML issue 2974]