As far as I know it is not illegal to breed the ferret and the European polecat, it is however animal cruelty!!!. The ferret is a domestic animal, he is used to living with people, sharing a cage and playing in the open. The European polecat is a solitary animal, they only spend time together for mating, then the male will leave, the female will stay with the kits until they can fend for themselves, then they will also go their separate ways. If you breed these two you will get animals that live between two worlds and this is cruelty. The kits could get the polecat color gen and the ferrets personality gen, these are the lucky ones and few and far between. They can also get the ferret color and the polecat personality, these are the very unlucky ones, because if you don't know their background, you will never understand why thy do what they do. In Holland we call these animals a frunzing, A cross between the fret (Dutch for ferret) and bunzing (Dutch for polecat). These animals do not like to be with other ferrets, they will not play in the open but will walk around the room close to the wall, they will never be 100% tame so there is also the risk that they can turn and bite you without provocation. These are very unhappy animals, they are forced to live in captivity with other animals while their instinct tells them they should be alone and hiding from these people, they do not live long lives, the stress of living in an unnatural environment makes them very unhappy and will give them ulcers, people give them up to shelters because they bite, they then often end up in a lager group of ferrets and they will attack the other ferrets. They can not be released into the wild, they were not taught to hunt by there mother, but due to their genes they can not be happy in captivity. There is a discussion going on here about using animals for testing. Is this any crueler than what these breeders do? Creating an animal that has to live between two worlds, just to have a color that mother nature in her wisdom has filtered out when people decided to create the ferret. it seems to me that some humans are so full of themselves that they only see the mistakes others make and not the mistake they make themselves. by trying to be better than mother nature they are being very very cruel. Please let the ferret be a ferret and a polecat a polecat and love the ferret for himself and not his color. Stephenie, Netherlands [Posted in FML 7174]