Opening disclaimer - we've had ferrets almost as long as we've been married. Delightful little guys that appear to have some dog-like characteristics when it comes to bonding with people - they are also playful like kittens for most of their lives. Every one has a very distinct personality.
People who study wild ferrets don't see the human interaction part and it appears it may have arisen from domestication - not unlike dogs. Sukie notes a fascinating paper that appears in PLoS ONE.
Man’s Underground Best Friend: Domestic Ferrets, Unlike the Wild Forms, Show Evidence of Dog-Like Social-Cognitive Skills
Anna Hernádi1,2, Anna Kis2,3*, Borbála Turcsán2, József Topál1
1 Research Centre for Natural Sciences, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary, 2 Department of Ethology, Eötvös University, Budapest, Hungary, 3 HAS-ELTE Comparative Ethology Research Group, Budapest, Hungary
Abstract
Recent research has shown that dogs’ possess surprisingly sophisticated human-like social communication skills compared to wolves or chimpanzees. The effects of domestication on the emergence of socio-cognitive skills, however, are still highly debated. One way to investigate this is to compare socialized individuals from closely related domestic and wild species. In the present study we tested domestic ferrets (Mustela furo) and compared their performance to a group of wild Mustela hybrids and to domestic dogs (Canis familiaris). We found that, in contrast to wild Mustela hybrids, both domestic ferrets and dogs tolerated eye-contact for a longer time when facing their owners versus the experimenter and they showed a preference in a two-way choice task towards their owners. Furthermore, domestic ferrets, unlike the wild hybrids, were able to follow human directional gestures (sustained touching; momentary pointing) and could reach the success rate of dogs. Our study provides the first evidence that domestic ferrets, in a certain sense, are more dog-like than their wild counterparts. These findings support the hypothesis that domestic species may share basic socio-cognitive skills that enable them to engage in effectively orchestrated social interactions with humans.
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