Ferret Dominance: My freind has though owning many ferrets over the years and watching other ferret groups, figured this: Ferrets have ranking, one below the other, to each other Ferret females and ferret males tend to concintrate on the same sex for dominance. It's sort of like two hierarcies. But ferrets of either sex can be head ferret, and either sex ferret can challange another ferret. IT's sorta complicated. Like this: f1 m2 f3 m4 f5 The ferret has to challange the ferret directly above before being taken seriosuly for another challange, but for day to day disapline, the males tend to keep the males in line, the females keep the females in line (and of course head ferret rules go) Babies are exempt from rankings, being tolerated by all and they cannot challange anyone untill they are considered adults Ferret rankings are more mobile than dog rankings, and can change even in an older group of ferrets, especially if skill are similar, or a ferret is ambicious. Depression: Unfortunatly I don't know how to help you. Our ferret Triton also suffered after his freind died, but he turned violent, not introspective. Unfortunatly, we had to wait it out. We DID find that the first ferret we got, he beat up, but with each sucsessive ferret, he calmed down more. Mel [Posted in FML issue 2518]