Holly, i realize you were trying to bring another perspective into this discussion, but i have to disagree! You can't compare deaf humans having children with the practice of breeding deaf animals, in the big scheme of things humans being born deaf is still a huge minority, when it comes to ferrets humans have created this defect by breeding for colors that are not natural, albinos can be born in the wild, but usually defects cause them to die before they can reproduce, our ferrets are being kept safe and therefore we can manipulate and breed an animal that can pass on these genes. would it be safe to say that almost 50% of the ferret population is deaf? maybee that's to high of a number, but how long untill we get there? I believe that we as humans have a responsability to breed for good traits and qualities rather than color. The sad thing is that most people looking at ferrets in a petstore go for the cute blazes and unusuall colors, but most people are uneducated when they buy their first ferret, alot of them are bought for their children, and in too many cases people don't bother to educate themselves down the road about their pet. So these cute fuzzies are unnecessarily being punished because their humans don't realize that they are deaf. (alot of ferrets are being abused, and deafness is not the cause) I believe the fuzzies themselves don't know they are handicaped, and are as happy and wonderful as a hearing fuzzie, but they do have problems, and we are partly to blame, don't we want the best for our ferrets? I was talking to a guy that works at my local Petco, about deafness in ferrets, he had no idea about it and was in fact denying any such problems, he thought of me as a potential customer and his goal was to sell a ferret. I'm really not flaming anybody, this is just the way it is, people are always going to breed for unusuall colors as long as there is a demand for them, education is still what there is lack of, and the only way we can improve the quality of any ferrets life. Breeders have a responsability to inform, too bad big farms like Marshall can't be bothered with minor details like that! I would still buy from a private reputable breeder if given the choice, but i would rather buy from one i feel is breeding for quality and health rather than color. I haven't been following the thread on the fml, i appologize if i am just repeating what has already been said, and please know that i am not flaming anyone, just expressing my opinion. Sincerely Josephine [Posted in FML issue 3114]