Having had a huge owl TRY to get one of our ferrets to eat I can't help but wonder if J.R. Rowling had heard of similar incidents which led to her food choice for that critter since it is a mythological composite which is part bird. (BTW, from that experience, when being persistently mobbed by a huge owl intent on eating your ferret the thing which works is to put the ferret down the neck of your shirt but ONLY if you imitate the swallowing chin-lifting motions of an owl.) Oh, and we heard of an eagle taking a neighborhood cat a few years ago from family in the Inner Mountain West (which was when we got them a huge midwest cage for when their cats wanted to be in the backyard, as I recall). Ferrets as food seems to me to be a way to emphasize that hippogryphs are wild creatures which live by rules other than our own. I still wish it wasn't in there, but it is, it is just a very brief mention, and the series moves on well past that. Nor does it disparage ferrets as I recall -- but is used to emphasize the wildness aspect of the mythical creature. Hagrid as a character does have a taste for monsters and that is repeated over and over. His giant spiders had a taste for Harry and Ron. That doesn't make JR Rowling a cannibal. Just my take... [Posted in FML issue 4539]