Questions: 1) Since domestication ( process of change brought about by genetic drift that allows the organism (plant or animal) to improve its survival in the face of new changes) gives an organism escape from extinction, how can this same organism survive if it has completed its domestication (unable to reproduce) and cannot compete successfully with its advancing competitors? 2) Can any organism, plant or animal, give to its offspring the survival genes, those pieces of recombinant DNA needed for the future generation(s) if it cannot go through the process of transferring from father/mother to son/daughter generation when the process of transference is incontrovertibly blocked by desexing that organism? Answers to 1) and 2): It can't. Consider the gene pool of the ferret: for every ferret that is prepubertically desexed, one tiny drop of survivability of the ferret species is drained from that pool. The pool becomes shallower and shallower day by day and a time will come when it it is dried and shriveled, dried and emptied. The ferret will vanish from the face of the earth. The ferret will become extinct. Do you think you are driving the ferret towards extinction every time you buy a prepubertically neutered ferret, the Marshall Farm's variety or any other? Do you really care? Is this something to consider? You decide. Of course, there is a way out. That way is through ferret cloning. By cloning ferrets the evolutionary process may be accelerated beyond our greatest imagination. Would you like a ferret as big as a German shepherd? With legs like a greyhound and ears like a fennec fox? How about a ferret that could mimic simple human speech like my magpie? Beyond belief? Not really. We already got one . . . it's the angora ferret! (not cloned) Eugenics is the word. Eugenics is the way. Eugenics is the method whereby races may be grown far beyond what is in existence now. Some day, there may even be a ferret super race . . . but not if you keep buying the majority ferret of today's marketplace. The one constant in this universe is change. You either "Go with the flow" or you'll be left behind to wither and die. Edward Lipinski, Der Wahrheitskaempe von Frettchenvergnuegenland dabei, der sagt, "Frettchen . . . leben Sie wohl." [G.] Edward Lipinski, the champion of truth from ferret joyland who says, "Live well . . . ferret" [Posted in FML issue 2387]