FACTORALY - E61 FERRETS

Episode Date: October 24, 2024

These fascinating creatures have been keeping us company for quite some time - and since they don't eat grain, they've been keeping our stores rodent-free for thousands of years, too. Find out more here. And remember to click on the pics to go ferret-like down the rabbit holes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello Bruce Fielding. Hi there Simon Wells. And hello listeners, one and all. Are there people listening? One would hope. What is this show? Well, this is a show called Factorily. And Factorily is a podcast with me, Simon Wells.

And me, Bruce Fielding. And we love facts. We are nerds. We love interesting, random facts. And we enjoy collecting knowledge and going, did you know, at the drop of a hat. I won my most recent pub quiz on Sunday. Did you indeed?

I did. Well done. Bravo. How many are on your team? Four. Right. But only one of us who knew the answers. Okay. Well, I mean, that's... Actually, no, that's not true. Because one of them knew that Steve Irwin was killed by a ray. And I thought it was a crocodile and I thought it was a crocodile.

I thought it was a crocodile as well. Yes. Ah, well, there you go. Dropping in facts before we've even properly begun. So each week we bring a random topic, and we go away, we find out some interesting facts, we come back together, and we chat about it for half an hour, give or take,

and you lovely lot get to listen in. Yeah. So what's this week's special subject, Simon? This week's special subject is ferrets. What's a ferret? What is a ferret? Where does the word ferret come from? Why are there ferrets?

Right, so ferrets. i actually had to um check up on this first to make sure i was talking about the right thing i've always had a problem there's a little family of creatures called mustelids okay m-u-s-t-e-l-l-i-d right and this includes badgers skunks mink wolverines otters weasels stoats wolverines wolverines yeah yeah the tall handsome australian fellow with the long claws you know yes um and they include ferrets and i i have historically had trouble identifying what's a what's a ferret what's a weasel what's a stoat because they just seem too similar in my mind yes they seem similar in my mind mainly because um i've referenced this before there was a wonderful stop motion animation uh tv series of

the wind in the willows when i was a kid yeah wind in the willows is is one of my favorite books and the bad guys in the wind in the willows are the ferrets and the weasels and the stoats who live in the wild wood and i've never been able to pick one from the other because the cartoon didn't show them particularly realistically. They are quite similar. They are quite similar. They're little furry things that you see scurrying around in the woods. They're sort of roughly squirrel-sized or a bit bigger.

But the weasels are fairly small creatures, about 20 centimetres in length. Stoats are 20 to 30 centimetres in length and ferrets are about 50 30 centimeters in length and ferrets are about 50 centimeters in length but otherwise they're quite similar and i always get them confused um but that's what a ferret is the word ferret uh comes from the old french furet which comes from the latin furo which means thief okay because ferrets have a tendency to sort of scurry around and nab things and catch things and scurry away with what they've caught so in fact the latin uh the scientific name is uh mustela putorius furo indeed it is which basically means stinky little thief

is that right that's wonderful um stinky i guess comes from the fact that uh much like skunks ferrets can secrete um a secretion from their rear ends yes as a sort of a defense mechanism nowhere near as smelly as as skunks but they they do that um and because ferrets have been domesticated and kept as pets in some parts of the world, there is a practice of actually surgically removing the anal gland that produces that secretion so they don't smell your house up. Yeah, because they are quite smelly. They can be. In the UK and the most of Europe, that's been banned. It's just sort of been declared an unnecessary mutilation, so they don't do it in civilised parts.

Good. unnecessary mutilations so they they don't do it in in civilized parts good ferrets come in various different colors they they sort of range from brown to white to black to gray to albino to a funny sort of mixture of all of the above some ferrets look like they're sort of white underneath and gray on top they They're sort of faded into each other. They often have a sort of little brown face mask that makes them look rather cute and adorable. But they're all born white. They're born white, yeah. The kits, they're called kits. Baby ferrets are called kits.

Isn't that cute? And they're all white. And then they sort of turn different colours. I found out that, this is very confusing. A male ferret is called a hob, unless it's neutered, in which case it's called a jib. Yeah.

Female ferrets are called a jill, unless they've been spayed, in which case they're called a sprite. Isn't that cute? Why differentiate? I don't know. I don't know. I guess it's gelding and things like that.

We do it with other breeds. It just seems like an extra layer of unnecessariness. A litter of kits. A female ferret can produce two or three litters a year, producing three to seven kits per litter. Okay. So they're quite... Do they come in kit form?

Hey! A self-assembly kit. Yes. Why not? Ferrets are most active at twilight, either at dawn or at dusk. And I discovered a new word I didn't know before. Crepuscular. It's a good word, isn't it?

I love it. So nocturnal things come out at night. Diurnal? Yes, correct. Diurnal things come out during the day. Yes. Crepuscular things come out at night. Dianal? Yes, correct. Dianal things come out during the day. Yes. Crepuscular things come out in between, dawn and dusk. Dawn and dusk, and they're kind of like fairly relaxed during the rest of the night and the day.

Do you know about the weasel war dance? Oh, I've heard of this. Yes, go on. So they do a little dance well quite a big dance when they get excited you know how um cats often get the zoomies yes they kind of zoom around the place ferrets do a similar thing and it's called the weasel war dance even though they're ferrets yes apparently um in the wild they perform this thing as a diversionary tactic. They do it to confuse and disorientate their predators.

Oh, okay. Pet ferrets still do it, and it's seen as a mark of excitement and friendship and general joie de vivre. Yes. It's just happy ferrets. Happy little ferrets. And when they're doing that, they make a little chirpy noise, which is called duking. Ooh. D-O-O-K-I-N-G.

Duking. Duking. So you asked earlier, where do ferrets come from? They come from different places, and it depends who you ask. So most people will say that a ferret is a domesticated form of the European polecat. Yes, that's what I read. Others will say it's a domesticated form of the North African polecat. I found one source. Scientists, eh?

I found one source, one single source, that said they were present in Egypt. They were kept as pets in ancient Egypt. We're back to Egypt again. Every episode. But it then went on to say, there are no mummified remains. There are no bones. There are no hieroglyphics that can support the fact that ferrets existed in ancient Egypt. There is one single painting where there's a couple of Egyptians on a boat with a little animal on the end of a lead

that may or may not be a ferret. Right. That is the entire substantiation for that claim. Yes. They were certainly around in Roman times. Romans had ferrets. They're used for hunting. They're used for pest control.

They're very good at rabbit hunting. They're good at rabbit hunting. They're good at keeping the mole population down on your stately lawn. Do you know why that is? No. It's because they like holes. Right.

And they've got elongated vertebrae. So they're actually quite slinky. Oh, right. Because of the way their vertebrae are made. You can hold a ferret a bit like a scarf. Yes, okay. In your hand. It kind of hangs down both sides.

Right. So they can get round all sorts of difficult turns. So in a molehill or in a rabbit warren, they can get to places which other animals, like a terrier, for example, can't get to. Begins to sound like that old advertising campaign, doesn't it? Breaches the parts. Breaches the parts of the rabbit warren that other muster lids can't reach quite yes so they are very very good at rat and rabbit hunting

anywhere that has domesticated them and tamed them, they have been used for this purpose. So the UK used them, New Zealand used them, Australia used them. You say that, but there are laws about importing ferrets into Australia, I think, because they don't want them to breed the same way that the rabbits did. That's right, yeah. Now this is, I don't know if you've read this, this is all New Zealand's fault. Okay. Sorry, anyone from Newaland who's listening greg greg probably well he's australian so he'll just he's new zealand he just lives in australia

oh is he yeah i didn't know that sorry greg crikey we've slammed him before for being australian now we're going to slam him for being from new zealand um so new zealand much like australia had problem with rabbits which again was their own fault because they brought the rabbits there in the first place. But they had a problem with the rabbit population. In 1887, farmers started importing ferrets into New Zealand to keep the rabbit population down. They bred them with polecats to sort of make a ferret-polecat hybrid, which would survive well in the wild, and absolutely go to town on the rabbit population and keep it down. In 1879, five ferrets were imported, just five. And then between 1882, 1883, 1,217 ferrets were imported.

So the first five obviously made a good impression. Yes, and it wasn't breeding. They were all imported. They were imported. I think they started breeding them once they were there but um they they brought over you know quite a lot of them yes um very successful so they started you know making these hybrids in total by 1884 they had bred uh 4 000 of these hybrids. They brought over 3,099, specific number, weasels and 137 stoats to get rid of the rabbits. And some people were a little bit concerned that this might upset the natural ecology of the local environment. And they were dead right. So the ferrets did take care of the rabbits, but then they started destroying the local bird population. Yes, they're very aggressive hunters. Yeah, they are.

New Zealand now has the world's biggest population of ferret-polecat hybrids. And as of 2002, it's now illegal to breed or sell ferrets in New Zealand. Yeah, I can see why they would do that. They are sold as pets yeah as well yeah but they're not very good pets for small children because they see small children as kind of prey oh really see so if you're a grown-up and you know how to handle a ferret that's fine but if you're a little kid they can get a bit handling ferrets get a bit bitey, can't they? Yeah. They've got quite sharp teeth. Speaking of being bitten by ferrets, I came across,

I knew this in the back of my mind, but I'd never really looked into it. I came across a wonderful old English practice called ferret legging. Yes. And ferret legging is a, I don't know if you'd call it a sport or a game or just a pastime yes um this used to be very big in yorkshire i i think um i've always associated ferrets in this country as being quite a northern animal to keep yeah um it's ferrets down your trousers right down your trousers essentially yeah and this is not good for the ferrets or for the person whose trousers it's ferrets. Well, no, I shouldn't think so.

I mean, there was one particular professional ferret legger who used to be a sort of a groundskeeper. And he used to have ferrets that he used to keep the rabbit population down. And he apparently used to keep ferrets down his trousers in order to keep them warm and away from rain and so on until he released them to to do their stuff right take the bicycle clips off and let them yeah exactly yeah so he claimed it was a perfectly okay thing to do um so yes you tie up the ankles of your trousers you chuck a ferret down your trousers you see how long you can last one or two uh depends on the local rules okay uh you can go with either but the more ferrets the better and how long do people normally last with ferrets down

their trousers well the first world record was 30 seconds right uh that was then broken by one minute that was then broken by five minutes 90 minutes two, two hours. Yeah. In 1981, a fellow called Reg Meller, who was a retired miner from Barnsley. And mad person. Sure. At the annual Pennine show in 1981, he made a total time of five hours and 26 minutes. With a couple of Ferret-stained trousers. Because they bite and scratch and stuff.

I mean, they're not happy. Yeah, it's not just that they're tickly. No. Apparently, this fellow Reg Mellor, he is responsible for a new rule that was brought into this thing where you wear white trousers because that shows just how much blood is being produced and therefore it sort of increases the impressiveness of this feat um yeah he said he got away with it for so long by virtue of just making sure his ferrets were well fed and happy before he

bunned them down his trousers so they had no real need to attack him yeah um wow so yeah that's fun i mean they do make quite good pets but you need to have more than one okay they're like they're like company ah right they're social animals i mean i was hearing this morning from a friend of mine from pads paddy who was saying that he there was a place where they had 40 ferrets. Wow. Like a public building. And they used to sleep together in a clump. Oh, that's cute.

Very sweet. Oh. But yeah, I mean, they can make quite good pets if you like that sort of thing. I mean, it's interesting. When you go abroad with an animal, you have to do an animal health certificate. And it says dogs, cats and ferrets on the form. So ferrets are actually actively named as a pet that you can take aboard with you. Right, okay. This gets a bit dicey. When you go to America, I looked up the restrictions. Some places are okay with ferrets, some places are not. And then there's just like half a page on which parts

of america are and aren't okay with ferrets yes and it varies state by state you know one part of california doesn't allow them because they eat all the fish uh hawaii doesn't like them because they spread rabies parts of wisconsin are okay with them so long as you have a specific ferret permit etc etc so it gets a little bit confusing in America. They are susceptible to disease. I mean, they're susceptible to human flu. Yes. You can give ferrets flu jabs.

Yes. To stop them from getting human flu. And they can also pass the flu to the humans. Yes. Works both ways. Very generous of them. Isn't it kind? We mentioned that they can be a bit aggressive and antisocial.

There was one ferret that was being kept in a Plymouth animal rehab centre. Right. And it was so aggressive that even the animal rehab centre said, look, we really can't do this. Oh, really? So they sent it to prison. They what? There was an offer from Dartmoor Prison to take on, the ferret's name was Grumpy Gareth. And Grumpy Gareth went to prison at Dartmoor

to keep the rat and whatever population down and to do all that stuff that ferrets do. Okay, so he was taken there for good use, not for bad behavior. Yes. He wasn't imprisoned or something. Yeah, true. There is a, I mean, there's the other side of the coin where people, you know, treat their ferrets quite badly. Yeah.

In Newcastle, there was a woman who, she was so drunk that she started punching Posh Spice. Oh. Posh Spice was the name of her ferret. Not the Spice Girl? No. Right. She was 39. She was found guilty of being drunk and disorderly and banned from keeping pets for two years.

And Posh Spice went to an animal shelter. Oh, poor Posh Spice. I know. I know. I know. I've never felt sorry for posh spice before in my life. But here we are. Initially, you had to have quite a significant income to keep a ferret. So in the 1300s, you had to have an income of 40 shillings a year just to be allowed to keep ferrets.

So you had to be a rich person to have a ferret. Right. OK. Because they're expensive to look after? I don't know. No, I think because they're sort of associated with royalty. OK. I think.

Because there's a picture. Isn't there a picture of Queen Elizabeth? Well, there is and there isn't there is a portrait of queen elizabeth the first uh entitled uh queen elizabeth's ermine or something like that yeah yeah uh but it looks very much like a ferret but it's got spots like an ermine right that i saw a suggestion that it's actually a pet ferret but the painter took certain liberties and put little dots on it to make it look more like an ermine to make it seem more regal right um okay that makes but i think it's i think it looks like a ferret myself the idea of quinn is the first i

mean i i see i see ferrets as being quite a common animal yeah they're sort of working creatures you know keeping down the rodent population like ferrets and whippets exactly yes yeah ferrets and whippets and pigeons gosh we are alienating an awful lot of northerners today, aren't we? Oh, yes. Anybody with a cloth cap, tune out now. I used to live around southwest London, and I frequented a pub in Putney by the River Thames. And there was a local fellow who owned a ferret. And he took his ferret to the pub with him quite frequently on a lead.

You'd see this man walking his ferret along putney high street and he'd go into this pub and the ferret would just sort of sit on his shoulder and then scurry into his inside jacket pocket and then scurry around to his trouser pocket and then back up to his shoulder again um i would never have particularly associated that with being a royal or a regal creature isn't there a pub or several pubs called the Dog and Ferret or the Badger and Ferret? Yes, there probably are. There's a make of beer called Thirsty Ferret. Ah. Thirsty with an F. Yes.

It's rather pleasant. They go into this thing called dead sleep. Did you read about this? No, I didn't. What's this? So ferrets basically they kind of almost go comatose. um when they so when they sleep they kind of go so deep sleep that you can sort of pick them up and they just go all floppy oh they don't wake up right and you can you can actually their heart rate slows down so much that you can almost believe that they're dead but they're not they're just sleeping they're just going into a little semi-hibernation yes yeah exactly oh interesting i'm going to put a video of a ferret in dead sleep

in the factorily blog a fine repository of further research which you'll find at factorily.com factorily.com that's the one marvelous enjoy there goes the rest of your day you'll be ferreting around there for facts for ages. Oh dear. I thought you were going to use that at the end. I might still. Well, if you're going to put a video of a ferret in deep sleep on the website, then I'll put a video of ferret racing. Ferret racing? ferret racing ferret racing ferret

racing so this is another another tradition along with ferret legging that used to be quite popular in in the north of england i think it's now fairly prominent in the southwest as well um it's sort of a local activity that happens in in pubs and fates of course it does family fun days and things like that um there's one particular pub in north yorkshire called the craven arms and they have an annual ferret racing event and there's a video i'll put on the website this pub they put up this entire rig of drain pipes uh sort of side by side yeah and people bring their pet ferrets and insert them into said drain pipe and they have a race to see which ferret can get to the other end of the drain pipe quickest

and they put small bets on it and it's it's a whole it's a whole thing they do like a pipe don't they they're quite they're quite fond of a pipe well there's there's a company that trains ferrets to actually deliberately go up pipes you mentioned this on our episode on pipes i did i did please please go to our episode on pipes um because they do run cables uh they put like a light wire a light wire on a light string on a ferret and run it up a up a pipe yeah and then put the electrical cables on afterwards um but they're used in all sorts of places that you wouldn't expect. So TV studios have used them. There was a real problem with the coverage of the wedding of Charles and Diana. Right. And there's a whole load of new cabling had to be done outside Buckingham Palace.

And there were ferrets used to run new cabling. That's wonderful. For that. Boeing have used ferrets to run cabling in airplanes. That's brilliant. And my favourite is the Large Hadron Collider at CERN uses ferrets to run cables. Isn't that fantastic? Such an incredibly modern and up-to-date

and technologically advanced piece of equipment is reliant on a ferret to run its cables. Yeah, on something from the 13th century or even earlier. That's brilliant. Yes. Oh, I love that. I mean, you know,

if you're ever in need of a cable running up a pipe, I will put a link in the show notes to this company that trains ferrets to go specifically up pipes. Oh, it's a company that will sort of bring their ferrets along and run that cable laying service for you.

That's fantastic. People get very fascinated by ferrets, although some people prefer a poodle. Do they? I think so. Depends on the purpose, I suppose. Well, unless you're in Argentina in 2013. Right, that's going to Argentina in 2013. Right.

That's going to need some explaining. There's basically a con artist that started selling ferrets as poodles. They injected the ferrets with steroids and then restyled their fur. What? And then sold them at high prices as exotic miniature poodles. That's, that's, what? Yeah. Where was this again?ina 2013 that's weird yeah yeah i mean it was um quite something uh and people only realized that they that they not got a poodle when

they took the ferret to their vet get a bit injected for distemper and stuff. Oh, my goodness. My other favourite is there was a... You shouldn't really dress ferrets up in clothes. OK. It's a bad thing. Right. But there was a company, I think it still exists, a place called Ferret World in Dudley. So Ferret World, in 2005,

they started producing Burberry jackets for ferrets to give them that urban look. And Burberry took them to court. Oh, really? Because they weren't actually Burberry jackets, they were. They were Burberry-esque. They were made from sort of a similar material. I was really scared for a moment you were going to say they started using ferret fur in Burberry coats. Oh, well, you can use ferret fur.

Can you? I was only joking. Can you? No, no, no. Yeah, it's actually, they don't call it ferret fur in Burberry coats? Oh, well, you can use ferret fur. Can you? I was only joking. Can you? No, no, no. Yeah, it's actually, they don't call it ferret. It's a bit like, you know, when you have rabbit fur, they don't call it rabbit. Oh, that's angora, isn't it? But yeah, so ferret coats are made of a thing called fitch. Fitch? So fitch is basically ferret. You skin a ferret and you make a coat out of it. Wow. It's called a fitch coat. Not to be confused with an Abercrombie and fitch coat basically ferret. You skin a ferret and you make a coat out of it. Wow.

It's called a fitch coat. Not to be confused with an Abercrombie and fitch coat. Well, quite. Or a Burberry. Oh, that's brilliant. Well, it's not so brilliant for the ferret, I suppose. But I suppose you get coats and pelts and things made of mink and ermine and things like that. They're all related, aren't they?

They are. I can't imagine. You sort of picture a... Is it an ermine that they they wear in the house of lords the big white fluffy thing with the the spots i can't imagine anyone sort of standing around in the house of lords saying ah look at my new coat this is made from ferrets you any um guinness records they do yes we've got a couple of records for for ferrets um one of which was the the earlier one mentioned about the uh the ferret legger all right the five hours and 30 that's the fella yeah um the there's a record for the fastest ferret oh this made use of the the ferret the ferret racing

in the pipes thing uh this record was set on the 11th of july 1999 and that ferret still holds the record five years uh no 1999 25 years oh 25 yes there hasn't been a faster ferret since goodness not measured or at least measured yes because you would think you know with athletics where sort of the time comes down all the time, that people would breed a faster ferret. You would think so, yeah. Maybe they exist, but they haven't yet been officiated by Guinness, I don't know. This record was set at the North of England Ferret Racing Championships.

Of course it was. Held in Blythe in Northumberland. It was an albino ferret called Warhol owned by one Jackie Adams. And this ferret ran the 32 foot tube race and set a world record of 12.59 seconds. That's reasonably quickly.

It's not bad, is it? Yeah. The picture that's in my mind is the fact that the ferret is called Warhol. Yes. I imagine that the owner is slightly bold and wears it on his head as a wig. Quite possibly. It didn't state, but let's imagine that if we want to.

The only other world record I found was the largest litter for a domestic ferret. Okay. I said earlier on they sort of have a litter of between three and seven kids. In 1981, Jay Cliff from Staffordshire had a ferret who gave birth to a litter of 15. Wow.

And that's worthy of being a Guinness World Record. Guinness have refused outright to do a record for the world's biggest ferret for fear of ferrets being overfed and mistreated. Yes. So they haven't got that. A bit like courgettes. Sure.

No courgettes were harmed in the making of this episode. Well, I enjoyed researching ferrets, but I've run out of ferret facts. Yes, I think I have ferreted out all of the facts that I'm going to find. So that's it. We are done. Before we're done, we need to do, well, three or four things, really. Yes. I mean, we've mentioned the Facebook page before. We have. The other three things that we want you to do are, number one, Simon. Number one, please subscribe to this fantastic podcast so that you can get a weekly notification telling you of its latest release. That's right.

Number two. Leave us a review. Five stars. Not half. Number three, please tell all your nerdy friends about this podcast so they can listen as well. Or friends who own ferrets. Either or. Both. Yes. Why not?

Do you have a friend who owns a ferret? Do you have a ferret fancying friend? Please tell me you don't. So that brings us to the conclusion of another fun-filled ferret fancying fantasia of Factory. Please come again next time. Please do. I hope you've enjoyed this one. Absolutely.

And we look forward to entertaining you next time with another one. Indeed. See you then. Bye-bye. Au revoir.