wild ferrets!!!

[darren m 1]

is there such a thing as a wild ferret ???. any where in the world .

we all talk about , what they would do in the wild etc .

but is there or was there ever such a thing , unless you count , stoat , weasel , mink etc .

[Guest little_lloyd]

Black foooted ferret! Comes from north america somewhere.

 

Try this link- www.blackfootedferret.org/facts-history.html

[borderboy 80]

I'd say polecats are about the closest animal which are truely wild, although feral ferrets are far from uncommon...

[sureshot 0]

Thier are wild ferrets on a strectch of motorway near me you quite often see the odd dead alhbino ferret on the hard shoulder

[Guest MOLLY]

An albino ran over the road in front of me the other week. It had what looked like a dead baby rabbit in its mouth.

MOLL.

[J Darcy 5,871]

The european polecat and our ferret are practically the same.

[Guest oldskool]

  sureshot said:

Thier are wild ferrets on a strectch of motorway near me you quite often see the odd dead alhbino ferret on the hard shoulder

 

 

 

yep, passed an albino ferret yesterday on the dual carriage way near me....

[Guest Ditch_Shitter]

Absolutely yes, there is. The already cited Black Footed Ferret (Mustela Nigripes) is a ..... guess what? But then, if ye want something even closer to what ye may have out in ye back garden, look no further than the European Polecat (Mustela putorius). Get a dead Polecat and place it alongside a dead Polecat coloured Ferret (Mustela putorius furo) and it takes a specialist scientist examining the skull structure to hazard a decent guess at which is which. That's because they're so close, genetically, ye couldn't slip a razor blade between them. How anyone could then dismiss Steppe Polecat (Mustela putorius eversmannii) god alone only knows.

 

These things developed ~ according to fossil records. Even I'm not old enough to remember the time ~ 32 Million years ago. They've been doing their own thing ever since. And That is why I hold the " Dry Feed " brigade in such contempt. To suggest it's fine and dandy to offer the ultimate Carnivour a diet of greasy little pellets of vegetative and waste by products, and then expect it to live long and thrive, is to suggest such a one knows better than 32 Million Years of Natural evolution.

 

But there ye go. Plenty of people on here evidently Do know better than that. So I've about given up trying to discuss the matter with them. How can ye match anyone who already posesses more knowledge than nature has accrued over 32 million years?

[Guest JDF]

i would think diet since they were first domesticated would be the reason for the difference in skull structure.

[Crow 1]

But!

 

Isn’t the Black Footed Ferret of North America a ferret in name only, and a polecat just like the European and Siberian (or Steppe) polecat?

 

We have to bear in mind that the Black Footed Ferret wasn't officially recognised as a species until 1851, following the publication of a book by John James Audubon and Rev. John Bachman (both noted naturalists of their time - in fact Rev. John Bachman used his natural history knowledge to become one of the first writers to argue scientifically that blacks and whites are the same species, but I digress). However, despite the claims of Audubon and Bachman the existence of the Black Footed Ferret was questioned as no other examples were reported for over 20 years.

 

At this time (mid to late 1800s) the domesticated polecat - i.e. the ferret - was a fairly common animal in England. Indeed, Nicholas Everitt in his book Ferrets (published 1897 and considered to be the first published works on the working ferret) states that the ferret can be "found in almost every village in England". Both Audubon and Bachman would have known of the existence of ferrets in this country (as it had been for over 500 years) so it's hardly surprising that they should name their newly found mammal after something so similar in every way - the ferret.

 

Despite being called the Black Footed Ferret its scientific name suggest that it has little to do with the ferret other than being from the Mustilid family. As Ditch has said, the European Polecat has the scientific name mustela putorius; mustela denoting that its from the Mustilid family, whilst putorius is a genus that comprises animals of certain aspects including anal glands which secret a foetid matter. The ferret's scientific name Mustela putorius furo is simply an extension of the European polecat. I cannot find an exact definition of furo in this context, as furo in Latin seems to mean 'to rage'. However, an obvious possibility of the furo suffix could relate to the fitch trade.

 

Why, therefore, Audubon and Bachman didn't name their find as Mustela furo blackfooticus is a mystery, choosing instead to name it Mustela Nigripes (of the Mustilid family with black bits in it - 'nig' often suggests black in colour, does ripes mean foot?).

 

Either way, I don't believe that the Black Footed Ferret is in fact a ferret, just a polecat with the ferret name (and lets face it, there are others in the animal kingdom that aren't actually what they are named!).

 

As for colonies of wild ferrets in this country I’m not convinced. Certainly there will be many escapees out there, but wild colonies? If there are (and I doubt it) then the appearance of an albino would be very rare as a wild colony would quickly revert to the regular polecat marking. Albinos in the wild are not only at a disadvantage from a breeding point of view, but also from a predatory point of view too. Nature doesn’t like the unusual in a species!

 

For those that often see dead albinos on various stretches of road it may be worth taking a look over the embankment – I suspect you’ll find a nice warren often visited by dimwit ferreters!

 

Just my thoughts!

 

Crow

[gibby 0]

Crow: Post of the week very interesting.

 

I read an article a month or 2 ago in bbc wildlife magazine about the black footed ferret being reintroduced over there as they are endangered now because of a lack of prey due to habitat being built on etc. Very interesting it was and the article also made it quite clear that these arent like our ferrets at all, and only due to reading that article had I actually heard of them !

[Guest Ditch_Shitter]

  Crow said:

As for colonies of wild ferrets in this country I’m not convinced. Certainly there will be many escapees out there, but wild colonies?

 

I suspect this issue may be confused by the simple fact that most people, on seeing a " Polecat " cross their paths would just arbitrarily declare it 'Polecat' or 'Polecat coloured Ferret' according to their own tastes and agenda.

 

Certainly, if taken alive, we are hearing enough evidence that 'Wild Polecats' behave quite unlike a lost ferret. Just as lost ferrets don't behave like wild polecats. The distinction is pretty clear, as evidenced by tales related on this very forum from time to time.

 

Next question is; What are people doing, catching wild polecats in places like Hampshire? Simple enough answer; Conservationists have been quietly and studiously breeding and releasing polecats, all over england, for at least the last thirty years that I personally know of. The thing about having them in every village in england looks well on the way to coming back to a reallity.

 

What I wonder about though is the future integrity of such blood. All well and good breeding up Mp and releasing them. But, as we all know, there's likely near as many Mpf being unintentionally 'released' by unattentive Ferreters. Hence the proliferation of white and thus pretty obviously Mpf being seen out there.

 

No reason to suspect Mp and Mpf wouldn't interbreed in the wild. So where does that leave us? Mp x Mpf is perfectly likely to throw white offspring. I suppose one of these days someone's going to cage trap a white ferret who displays the characteristics of a Wild Polecat. But then what'll be decided? That it's a loopy ferret someone abandoned? That it's a truly and completely gone feral ferret? Or will anyone actually dare to conjecture that it's the result of a Mpf / Mp breeding? Come to that; Will it matter?

 

Either way, I can't get the " Highland Wild Cat " out of my head on this one. Felix Sylvestrus s. Some sources have said, decades ago, that they'd now been found in Northumberland, thus staging a return into england and spreading. Yet others question wether there is Any pure lined FSs left out there at all. They, again, are said to interbreed quite freely with common moggies. And I'm not even certain if modern science has a practical (Other than grossly expensive DNA analysus) way of demonstrating purity in those. If we have, it'll likely involve making the cat dead first off. Thus potentially removing a rare, pure one from the gene pool. Much the same with Polecats.

 

 

JDF; I've really no idea what it is they look for in the skulls, mate. Absolutely no idea what could be causing what ever differance it is they do look for. Seeing as the very greatest majority of domestic ferrets have historically been fed a natural diet though ~ this crap about Dry " food " wasn't even around when they came up with the skull test thing, so it's nothing to do with that ~ apart from a spell when bread and milk was deemed acceptable, and I can't see that dallyance doing much to an entire sub species nut. Best I can offer is that perhaps it has something more to do with the fact that the wild living creature actually has to capture and kill its pray, on an almost daily basis? Just a wild guess, of course.

 

Nice little project for someone with more time on their hands than I then; Dig deeply into the academic texts and trace back to just what it is they look for and why. It's accepted by the scientific community, so it Must be peer reviewed in litrature. Somewhere.

[Guest JDF]

  Ditch_Shitter said:

JDF; I've really no idea what it is they look for in the skulls, mate. Absolutely no idea what could be causing what ever differance it is they do look for. Seeing as the very greatest majority of domestic ferrets have historically been fed a natural diet though ~ this crap about Dry " food " wasn't even around when they came up with the skull test thing, so it's nothing to do with that ~ apart from a spell when bread and milk was deemed acceptable, and I can't see that dallyance doing much to an entire sub species nut. Best I can offer is that perhaps it has something more to do with the fact that the wild living creature actually has to capture and kill its pray, on an almost daily basis? Just a wild guess, of course.

 

Nice little project for someone with more time on their hands than I then; Dig deeply into the academic texts and trace back to just what it is they look for and why. It's accepted by the scientific community, so it Must be peer reviewed in litrature. Somewhere.

little snippet of something i will look at further,an e-mail to some zooilogical society may clear it up

 

In order to resolve the apparent confusion over the relationship between polecats and ferrets, measurements were taken of corpses collected throughout Britain in the 1990s. Skins were given scores on each of ten features known to differ between polecats and ferrets. Linear measurements were made on skulls and cranial volume determined. Pelage (fur) scores showed clear differences between populations from different parts of the country, which enabled objective comparisons to be made with known Welsh polecats (these had the highest scores). Pelage scores decreased from west to west in Wales and England, which suggests that polecats have increasingly bred with ferrets as they recolonised England. Welsh-type polecats were confirmed throughout the existing Welsh and English Midland populations and in Cumbria and Argyll, with a variable proportion of ferret-like animals present in fringing and outlier populations. All animals from the Isle of Man, Shetland, the Western Isles, Mull and some parts of mainland Scotland were confirmed as feral ferrets.

 

Complementary studies of mitochondrial DNA revealed that two geographically distinct lineages exist in British polecats and feral ferrets. One is confined to Wales and the English border counties, and is thought to be derived from the ancestral British polecat; the other is found throughout Britain and is thought to be derived from the domestic ferret. However, this genetic work indicates that polecats and ferrets are so closely related as to be regarded simple as two forms of the same species. Domestication in ferrets has involved selection against many of the predatory and survival skills found in wild polecats. As a consequence, the ferret phenotype carries competitive disadvantages in the feral state, so there is likely to be selection for the polecat phenotype in all wild populations. This is expected to limit the negative impact of introgression upon polecat populations in Britain.

 

Morphologically speaking -- there are some major differences. Skull shape is different, base of skull is different, teeth are more crowded and numerically variable in the ferret, and the orbital angle is different. The internal structure of the eye is different, and there is some suggestion that there are differences in the structure of the brain. Sound location is different. Balance and leaping abilities are different. In all cases, controversy exists to whether the differences are due to speciation or to domestication. The two may look alike, but they are vastly different

[darren m 1]

interesting reading

so where door did the first ferrets originate

[Guest JDF]

darren every author of ferret books gives their opinion on this,from this and other things i've seen the general consensus seems to be that the ferret in britain came about with the arrival of the rabbit around two thousand years ago,opinion varies on wether it was a domesticated polecat or steppe polecat (the ferret and european polecat both have 40 chromosones while the steppe has 38).wether or not a domesticated polecat was used before this time in the rabbits native lands of spains iberian penninsula and north africa i've no idea.