A post I read about ferrets being domesticated 2000 years more than cats or dogs inspired me to verify some things I thought I knew. I thought dogs were one of, if not, the first domestic animals. http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/data/2002/01/01/html/ft_20020101.1.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog these sites have history roughly equivalent to what I had learned, and puts dogs conservatively 12000-14000 years ago lets say 10000-12000BC. http://www.lookd.com/cats/history.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog these sites have cat history as I learned it, and put domestication at Egyptian times and say 3500-8000 years ago lets say 3000-4000BC. http://www.rud.dk/ferrets/faqhtml/history.html http://www.britishferretclub.co.uk/ferrethistory.htm these sites both put ferret domestication in the hands of the Greeks 2500+ years ago around 400BC. I don't recall who made the post but thank you for inspiring me to verify some of the things I though I knew. One of the interesting things I found were the amazing number of web sites that deal with the history of domestic animals and how different people define domestication. In my web searching I came across this page that has scary inaccurate facts on ferrets she still thinks they are wild and thinks she is educating people. http://members.tripod.com/~Ketchup_9/ferret-home.html It seems that almost every time I go looking for ferret facts I find something like this that reminds me how inaccurate web sites can be. Ken Nyren Ken Nyren, 23/1/2006 [Posted in FML issue 5132]