Ferrets actually learn words easily. They simply need to have them repeated often enough in context, have the vocabulary and sentence structure kept simple, etc. -- the same rules for teaching children most effectively. To teach body parts you can use tricks like "Mommy kiss belly-belly" then kiss the belly and similar approaches for other sections of the anatomy. "More-more" is an easy one to teach and they do generalize it well. Today I was kissing Whizbang's belly and I said "Whizbang, give mommy more-more belly-belly" and she threw her upper body back and arched her belly for me. They can even learn conditionals with enough repetition. A useful one is "First medicine, then treat." That really can help ease medicine times. My long suspicion is that ferret ancestors needed to understand vocalizations and sounds of prey species as well as of ferrets and of some possible predators in pitch black burrows so could be pre-adapted for being better at sounds/vocal analysis than some other species are. Except when a ferret is partly deaf or deaf we've found that most ferrets learn vocabulary easily if it is just facilitated by staying simple and using repetition in context. We've had Steve say several times to Meltdown, "Meltdown, get Warp, then Meltdown get treat" then had Meltiw go down, and drag a sleeping Warp from under the bed, deposit her on Steve's foot, then look Steve in the eye and lick her chomps. We've said to Hjalmar, "Hjalmar, you stashed your fruitcake." only to have Fritter (who was our best at language) get up and check Hjalmar's favorite stash places instead of her own till she found and ate his treat. Hjalmar knew the work "Where's" very well and when we said, "Where's Hjalmar?" it would initiate a game of hide and seek. He never quite understood that we could still see him when he couldn't see us, though, so sometimes he would hide his upper body under blankets but his rear end would be hanging out and his tail wagging with excitement of playing his favorite game. Ruffle was seriously intellectually and physically impaired but she learned a few word including a handful of body parts and she loved to be asked to point out the body parts on a toy ferret. "Where ferret-mousie bum?", for example. She would get very proud of herself. Ashling was a big one for having conversations and she would shake her head "No" which a few ferrets here have done, give nose bumps "Yes" which most have learned to do (and she had a strong yes where she would then hold her nose against a person's cheek or streak it down the face) and when she was very serious she would do something none of our others have done -- she would nod. Words are incredibly useful and fun tools! Besides, it really is EASY to teach them words. As far as being bilingual is concerned; you don't know till you try. --- If you use window tops don't have curtains. (Having had a climber almost (I grabbed her legs.) slip between and window and a secure metal screen that way I speak from experience.) [Posted in FML issue 4498]