Note From Mary: Stuffed Toy Ferrets (Weasels)

  Every once in a while we take a walk through Ikea. We find cute gifts for nieces and nephews, as well as some neat stuff for ourselves. This last time, we got to the children's department and saw ... an ermine!

  Of course, I got one and brought him home. I mentioned it on one of the groups I belong to, and someone pointed out a weasel on the Ikea website.

  Off we went the next day. No weasel. But we were clever and had printed out the Ikea web page with the picture of the weasel on it; we asked at customer service. They told us that the weasels should be out on display the next day.

  We went back. This time we'd called beforehand and learned that the weasels were, in fact, there. Here's what happened:

	We saw all the adorable weasels (ferrets) on the shelves.
We grabbed a few and stuck them in a bag. That's me (Mary) with a bag full of weasels.
	Then we got a cart, so we could do more shopping and so the weasels would be more comfortable. They look right at home here, don't they?
As we walked through the rest of the store, several people pointed, saying, "aw! how cute!" or "ferrets!" Several people asked where we'd found them.
	Finally, it was time to check out. This is the cashier sending the weasels down the conveyor. Note all the little white faces waiting to go for a ride!

  Unfortunately, Ikea doesn't mail-order the weasels; it only sells them in its stores. If you have an Ikea near you, you can check in the children's department for a weasel of your own (and the ermine's very cute, too!).

  Eric and I are toying with the idea of buying up a bunch of the weasels and re-selling them to readers who are interested. We still have to iron out the details, and we'd have to have a good idea of how many we'd need to get (if we can even get them -- I don't think Ikea re-stocks their stuffed toys; they replace them with new designs).

  So ... if you'd be interested, we'd like to know. We've already gotten some responses from an e-mail we sent out a couple of days ago.

Are Ferrets Sickly?

By Bob Church

  When a person begins to think that ferrets are sickly animals, what's really happing is they are observing multiple phenomena.

  First, much of the disease seen in ferrets are an epiphenomenona of aging and are not really correlated with any genetic fault. For example, all older animals get cancers regardless of species (each species tends to have a predisposition towards certain types of cancers, but they still get them). Second, in some species, medical problems are more visual than in others, so tend to have a higher frequency of veterinary treatment. Third, I think there is a general misunderstanding about how long ferrets are supposed to live when compared with dogs or cats. Fourth, because ferret lives are compressed into fewer years, their medical problems are compressed into fewer years as well. Last, averaged statistics are fine, but there are always random individuals that are statistical outliers (sort of a scientific way of saying you've had bad luck).

  Did you know the national averaged lifespan of a pet dog in the United States is just 10-12 years of age? Irish Wolfhounds live only about 6-7 years, Great Danes about 7-10 years, and Jack Russell Terriers live about 13-15 years. Non-breed, mongrel dogs live about 12-16 years. The upper limit for dogs is roughly 20 years of age, although rare individuals live longer.

  The American cat lifespan is reported to range between 8-19 years, with the average death about 10-14 years and an upper limit about 18-22 years. Many fancy breeds of cats live only 7-10 years, and some less.

  American ferrets typically live about 5-8 years, with 10-year-old ferrets being uncommon, and anything older quite rare. A few ferrets have been reported to live to 12 or 13 years, with 14 years of age apparently the upper limit. Extremely rare individuals from all three species have lived longer--the equivalent of a human living in a decade or more past 100 (they won the longevity lottery, with one chance in the millions). Most ferrets live in the 6.5 +/- 1.5 years range -- an average life span.

  Animals have to die from something, and older animals die from cancers, various organ dysfunctions, deterioration of the immune system, and general senescence. Some of these problems are extremely visual; a ferret with cardiomyopathy might have ascites (fluid build-up in the abdominal area), but a dog with cardiovascular disease may not show any danger signals until they die in their sleep. In this example, one would get a vet bill, and the other would not, but it doesn't mean the later didn't die of a medical problem.

  Assume dogs and cats live about 12-14 years, and ferrets live 6-7 years. Assume all have an average of three medical problems during their lifetime. Finally, assume medical problems tend occur in the later life stages, roughly the second half of the life span. That would mean the three medical problems in the ferret would occur in the last 3 or 4 years of life, roughly one medical problem per year. In the dog and cat, medical problems would be a couple of years apart.

  Many people interpret this time-compressed view of medical problems as "proof" ferrets are sickly when it is simply an epiphenomenon of a shorter life span. I've studied this phenomenon extensively so I can factor it into a general economic model of domestication that I am working on, and if you looked carefully at the veterinary literature, cats and dogs suffer a wider range of medical problems when compared with ferrets. Part of this is because ferrets have only recently been scrutinized at the "cat-dog level of veterinary medicine," but part is also because ferrets simply suffer from a narrower range of medical problems. I believe a large part of this difference is related to inbreeding. Ferrets may display a wide range of fur coloration, but anatomically they are pretty much "mongrels" and do not display the serious and life-shortening medical problems of most fancy breeds of dogs and cats. Sadly, some breeders seem determined to change that.

  There isn't time or space to discuss the causes of cancer in this article, and I'm not going to differentiate between a neoplasm, carcinoma, or any other term except to say not all tumors are neoplasms, and not all neoplasms are cancers. Those tumors present in the pancreas responsible for insulinoma are probably due to a combination of genetics (the evolutionary history of dietary adaptation) and environment (consumed diet), rather than damage to multiple genes as seen in cancer. Both are significantly correlated to environmental factors, which means they are also correlated to the age of the animal. The reason the two are correlated is because the older you are, the more you have been exposed to those types of environmental agents that cause genetic damage and physiological changes. The bottom line is, older animals (dogs, cats, ferrets) display more abnormal growths than younger animals because they have been exposed to more harmful environmental agents. Not all environmental agents are from outside the body; one of the hypotheses explaining longer life span in mammals undergoing caloric restriction is a lowered exposure to free radicals and other substances generated during digestion and metabolism.

  To illustrate the effect of diet and environment on ferrets, consider the following. Ferrets have been shown to be extremely sensitive to second-hand smoke, probably in part due to their small lung size, rapid respirations, and constant testing of the air for odors; they are furry little air filters. Recent studies have shown ferrets receiving supplementary doses of beta-carotenes are at a significantly higher risk of disease from second-hand cigarette smoke than those that don't get the provitamin. Somehow, for some reason, beta-carotene exacerbates the effect of second-hand smoke on ferrets, showing diet can have a direct influence on other environmental factors.

  Finally, an individual ferret owner just may be unlucky, the pet-owner equivalent of someone who always craps out playing dice. Toss a completely balanced coin in the air a couple of thousand times, and 50% of the landings will be heads. Still, within that series of tosses will be runs of numerous heads or tails in a row -- hardly 50%. Disease is the same way; the "sickly ferrets" experienced by an individual become, at the population level, nothing more than the equivalent of a run of heads when flipping a coin. Simply put, it may be nothing more than coincidence (random chance) that an individual ferret owner has bad luck and sees what seems like a high percentage of sick ferrets in their personal experience.

  Bob Church has done extensive research on the habits, history, and physical makeup of ferrets and other mustelids while studying zoo-archeology. Bob always has a house full of ferrets and an endless supply of ideas on how to keep them happy and healthy.

  This article originally appeared on the Ferret Mailing List (FML) on April 27, 2003. Used with permission.

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--Mary, Eric & Gabby (the lone ferret)