I got a few emails asking what happened to part 1. I have NO idea; my mailbox said both were sent. Something in the twilight zone stole it, I imagine. Here's part 1 (it was obviously meant to run at the same time as pt.2), and my apologies. [Moderator's note: Yes, I was wondering about that too! Thanks for explaining. BIG] [NOTE: this is simply a 'clearing out' of backlogged questions I promised I would answer; don't infer anything from it. Replies or comments should be forwarded to my personal email account I won't see them on the FML) Q: "I'm just learning about ferrets...there seems to be a lot of confusion....It seems to me that each book is different from the other, like one will say the ferret was domesticated before cats and another will say it was later. Is this all mythology or do people actually know?" A: To know or not to know. What was the question? EVERY subject has a cloud of unproved 'truths' surrounding it (AKA: Common Knowledge), and while I would be hesitant to consider them a mythology, they do exist as a core of beliefs held true by individual ferret owners (in an anthropological sense, mythology would be correct). Some myths have a basis in fact (like theobromide or onion poisoning); others exist because of a TRADITION of believing them. Regardless of the scientific basis of belief, people will cling to unproved truths with a single mindedness approaching that of a hob in rut looking for a jill. Or shoe, rock, bump on a log, anything. 1. The "Out of Egypt" origin. Ever since Strabo mentioned Libyan ferrets, people have taken it as the place of ferret domestication (Are Belgian rabbits from Belgium? Are french fries French?). A King James mistranslation suggested to some that the ferret once lived in the Holy Land. If you accept ferrets lived in Judah, Egypt is easy to believe; after all, when the Hebrews escaped Egypt, they could have taken ferrets with them, right? I've traced the Egyptian idea to the mid-1800s, but it really took it's modern form in the 1980s with Chuck and Fox Morton's book. The idea existed before then, but with various ferret club's references to Morton's book, as well as a nearly rabid need to justify the domestication status of the ferret for legal reasons, it became a cemented, core belief. The truth is ferrets were NOT domesticated in Egypt and were NOT mentioned in the Bible. They have NOT been domesticated longer than the cat. Those are FACTS, sustained by a tremendous amount of physical evidence. The only 'evidence' for ferrets in Egypt is the interpretation that a hieroglyph depicts a ferret, an animal identified by trained, reviewed zooarchaeologists as a mongoose. If the Egyptians domesticated the ferret, why is there a god associated with every other domesticated mammal (and most other mammals, reptiles and birds), yet not a single god associated with the ferret? Where are the bones and mummies? Where are the Babylonian, Greek or Phoenician references? Where is the linguistic evidence? The genetic evidence? Why doesn't the ferret tolerate heat? Why do their photoperiod cycles coincide with a middle European origin? Why the temperate zone fat distribution? Where did they get the polecats to domesticate since they are not naturally found in Egypt? Where are they now? Why are they just on a hieroglyph and never in papyri, like all the other domesticated mammals? These aren't even the hard questions. It is either a conspiracy with Mother Nature being the head conspirator, or they simply were not there. So, where was the ferret domesticated? Who knows? The date was about 2400 years ago, and it must have occurred somewhere between the "western Morocco to southern France to Greece to Mesopotamia to northern Turkey" region, but even that is an educated guess based on historic documents. No one knows, and quite possibly it may never be known. It appears from historic documents the Greeks, Phoenicians and perhaps the Macedonians were involved in the domestication process (and later, perhaps, the Romans). But one thing is for sure; it wasn't in Egypt. 2. The "European Polecat" progenitor. There are basically three polecats (European, steppe, and Black-Footed Ferret); two are European and could have been the progenitor of the domesticated ferret. Based on skull characters, the steppe polecat was considered the likely choice. Later, early genetics suggested the European polecat was the ancestor. Very recent work suggest the genetics are so close and hybridization so common that the ancestor of the ferret is yet to be determined. In all likelihood, the domesticated ferret's ancestor was the European polecat, but it is NOT proven. 3. "Chocolate will kill ferrets." Enough chocolate will kill humans, so the statement is somewhat of a red herring. Chocolate is dangerous to dogs, but it has not been substantiated in ferrets and lots of anecdotal evidence suggests it is harmless. 4. "Ferrets will choke on bones." Absolutely. They will also choke on fabric, meat, kibble, and even water. An associated myth is cooked bone will splinter more. This is inaccurate; bone cooked with DRY HEAT will splinter more because the water and organics have been cooked out of the hydroxyapitite, leaving it brittle, but bone cooked in liquid (pressure cooking, boiling) gets softer because boiling water dissolves both the minerals and protein matrix of the bone. A boiled chicken neck or back is no more dangerous than kibble, will clean the teeth, and is a very good meal. 5. "Ferrets are gregarious." Adult ferrets (like polecats) are by nature solitary animals and practice same sex exclusion within the limits of their territory. If imprinted at a young age, ferrets retain their behavioral neotony (a trait of domestication) and will accept other ferrets as siblings (especially if all are neutered). If not imprinted and neutered, then they MAY revert to the exclusionary polecat 'mode' and reject other ferrets. Once the newcomer gets the 'nest scent', exclusion aggression generally ends. 6. "Marshall Farms ferrets are not as healthy as ferrets from private breeders." There is simply no scientific evidence published to support this conjectural myth. Remember, conjecture has "con" at the beginning. [Posted in FML issue 3251]