Sudden large fur loss: We had two who did that. For one it turned out that the ferret had suddenly taken to belly rubbing on the edge of a cardboard tube. Of course, sometimes a rapid and large loss in one location is indicative of a serious adrenal tumor. We had another who had a malignant one who lost all of her lower back fur in less than a week. Rapid surgical response saved her life and she went on to have many years ahead of her. If the other ferret has actually gotten compulsive about grooming know that ferret has a serious furball risk so will also need a vet check in that case and laxatives if something else does not contra- indicate their use. Are these ferrets who get a lot of exciting exercise time and interaction? Those are very important for avoiding repetitive behaviors in ferrets. Jodi, yes, there are health vulnerabilities and malformations beyond deafness which are more common with the sorts of neural crest genetic variants that cause panda markings. Deafness is quite common with panda markings in ferrets. You will want to read up on "neural crest" in places like http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Ferret- Genetics/ , http://listserv.cuny.edu/archives/ferret-search.html , and http://fhl.sonic-weasel.org/ . Although Waardensburg is often mentioned Dr. Brett Middleton (a classical geneticist) has since mentioned that the KIT Oncogene is a more likely culprit in most of these ferrets, so the neural crest connection was right when WS was first proposed but the actual most common type in ferrets was likley wrong. For info on working with a deaf ferret: http:// wolfysluv.jacksnet.com/deaf.html Sukie (not a vet; 24 years with ferrets in the family) [Posted in FML issue 4867]