Reverse ferret
★ BRITS aren’t “mad ferret” anymore, as we revealed yesterday, with the RSPCA reporting that the furry critters are being overlooked for adoption.
But how much do you know about the animals – and do people really shove them down their trousers for fun?
★ Here JAMES MOORE has ferreted out 15 fascinating facts…
1. Ferrets are small carnivorous mammals, probably descended from wild polecats. They are members of the Mustelidae family, along with badgers, otters and wolverines.
2. First domesticated about 2,500 years ago, ferrets have been used by humans to hunt rabbits and rodents thanks to their long bodies and flexibility.
3. Their images appear in Egyptian tombs. Queen Elizabeth I kept one as a pet in the 16th Century and was even painted with it. A famous portrait by Leonardo Da Vinci also features one.
4. The word ferret means
“little thief” in Latin, from their habit of hoarding small items.
Since the 1980s, the term “reverse ferret” has come to mean a change of plan.
5. A male is called a hob or a gib if neutered.
A female ferret is called a jill or a sprite if spayed. Babies are called kits and a group is known as a business.
6. Adult ferrets typically measure 20 inches long, sleep for 18 hours a day and can live for up to 12 years. The strict meat-eaters have 34 sharp teeth.
7. They can catch colds and flu but can’t sweat, so can be prone to overheating. They perform a “weasel war dance” when excited or before attacking. They hiss when scared and squeak when upset.
8. A female ferret can have up to 160 kids during its lifetime but they can die if they don’t have sex while in heat – a build-up of oestrogen causes anaemia, stopping the production of vital red blood cells.
9. Due to their ability to get into small places, ferrets were once used by aircraft giant Boeing to run wires through planes.
10. They were employed to run cables for the wedding of Princess Diana and Prince Charles in 1981. A team called Posh, Beckham and Baby laid them for London’s Millennium Concert too.
11. An old superstition says that drinking milk from a ferret’s bowl will cure whooping cough!
12. Ferret-legging’s the traditional sport of keeping a pair of them down your trousers for as long as possible. It may have started with poachers, who kept them concealed to use for hunting.
13. Miner Reg Mellor, from Barnsley, set a record for keeping two live ferrets down his trousers for five hours, 26 minutes despite multiple bites in 1981.
14. There was even a national ferretlegging competition held each year in Richmond, Virginia, in the US in the 2000s, while Albino ferret Warhol is recorded as the fastest ferret, covering a 32ft tube course in 12.59 seconds, in a 1999 competition staged in Blyth, Northumberland.
15. There are around 100,000 pet ferrets in the UK. One owner has been recorded as having a whopping 160. Celebrity ferret owners have included Madonna, Jonathan Ross and Paris Hilton.