Below are some interesting ferret facts that you may not be aware of:
- Ferrets are crepuscular creatures. (Crepuscular is a Latin word meaning “twilight.”) And this means that ferrets are naturally most active near dawn and dusk – when it is neither bright daylight nor fully dark.
- The Latin word furittus, which means “little thief,” gives us the name “ferret.” This is a fitting name because pet ferrets love to steal shoes and small items of clothing and hide them under beds and dressers.
- Mitochondrial DNA analysis indicates that ferrets were domesticated about 2, 500 years ago. Some people claim that the ancient Egyptians were the first to domesticate ferrets, but there really isn’t any good evidence to support the claim.
- There are colonies of feral ferrets in remote areas of New Zealand and on the Shetland Islands.
- Keeping ferrets as pets didn’t really take off in the US until the 1980s.
- It is legal to keep ferrets as pets in Brazil only if they have been implanted with an identifying microchip and are sterilized.
- The sideways hopping and jumping that you see your fuzzies engage in when they want to play is sometimes called the “weasel war dance.”