The main reason I'm not an advocate of nose thumping or flicking isn't that it's cruel--unless you're hitting your ferret very hard!--it's that it doesn't work. And, in some cases, as people have mentioned, it can actually make the poor fuzzy fear-aggressive. They need to trust us. Most ferrets don't see a flick on the nose as an aggressive move, but the ones who do will be hurt that we want to hurt them. I've raised a few ferrets, as well as adopted a couple, and in most cases biting is more about play than anything else. Abused animals are another story, of course, or those who are fear-biters. In my experience, I've been nipped too hard by ferrets who are playing and don't understand the limits or get carried away. I've also been bitten by a sick ferret who was very upset that we weren't making him feel better fast enough. Obviously, in that case, hitting him on the nose wouldn't have done anything. Feeding him duck soup did. As far as excited nippers go, I've found that nose thumping usually just teaches them that it's all right to play rough. If you watch two ferrets wrestling, you'll see that they're a lot rougher with each other than with us, which is one of the reasons we need to teach them our limits. Most of the time, mine seem to think a tap on the nose is just another game. My solution to the problem of teaching kits not to nip has been to gently take hold of the little brat's lower jaw; since my finger's generally in his mouth at the time, that's pretty easy. And then I hang on, and say "Don't bite" in a nice firm tone of voice. They really hate not being able to spit out your finger. Be careful--never hang on too hard, and let go if it seems like you might be hurting your ferret. The idea is to keep their attention on what they're doing wrong--which is biting your finger--by not letting them stop biting your finger. It seems to work. I don't have a ferret I wouldn't feel perfectly comfortable handing to a five-year-old. Of course, none of mine came to me from particularly bad situations, and most I've had all their lives. Biting and nipping are two very different actions, with different motives. Ferrets aren't naturally vicious, any more than dogs are (or people), so a ferret that really bites is reacting abnormally to a situation, and it's usually a learned response. A nip on the toes--even a hard one--is just an invitation to play. (Or an attempt to run off with mom's toes.) Jen with Winter (helping me type), Tesseract, Molly, Gibber, Simon, and Amadeo. [Posted in FML issue 2660]