Polecats have round ears like ferrets. But not all ferrets have ears with the exact same shape, so it's hardly a way to recognize fitch-ferrets. Bob Church <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >As for the "wild" blood in ferrets, I really don't know why anyone in the >USA (where ferret hunting is illegal almost everywhere) would even want a >ferret that was part polecat. * Trying to get "healthy genes" into the gene pool (which I think can be done anyway). * Be different. >Domestication of the ferret has been so successful that many hunters have >back-bred ferrets with polecats to help increase their aggressiveness and >hunting instincts. They do not have a primary purpose of cuddling with the >little beasts, so some nasty behavior is accepted in the hopes of more >rabbit for the dinner plate. Hunters here seem to think that hunting ferrets need to be very non-aggressive towards humans and while I know they aren't cuddled in every region of Sweden, in some they are when they aren't working. I think you can also find British examples of "most excellent hunters" who regularily get taken to shows and the like to be petted by children, just because they're very cuddly. >Besides, if you think ferrets are sometimes destructive to property, try an >animal that's twice as smart and three times stronger. I suppose it's easy to measure the relative muscle strengths of ferrets and polecats, but how do you ensure they've gotten the same kind of fitness training? Is there also a difference in the proportion of slow and fast muscle fibres between them? Precisely what kind of intelligence tests have polecats shown they perform better on than ferrets? -- Urban Fredriksson [log in to unmask] http://www.canit.se/%7Egriffon/ http://www.alfaskop.net/%7Egriffon/ferrets/ [Posted in FML issue 2161]