From:
sukiec@optonline.net
Date: 2004-01-10 16:08:02 UTC
Subject: RE: [ferrethealth] re: How firm are wild polecat and ferret stools?
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <3590870.1073750882074.JavaMail.root@indium.smartgroups.com>
Thanks, Chris, but the diet in captivity may not be the same as the diet in the wild (fresh deer livers, for instance). In the wild there would be assorted rodents, lagomorphs, frogs, some insects, carrion, etc. It is also possible that the result could vary by season which happens with some animals. In captivity even when trying to copy a wild diet there may be different meats or there may be different conditions of foods, or there may be different levels of insect matter or all sorts of other differences. I've heard about someone who hikes --that a lot that the wild scats of various carnivores she has encountered are looser than the stools she has noticed in zoos, for instance.
I think that it's going to come down to having to ask small aniaml curators in zoos (bearing in mind that the diet is different in zoos) and some researchers who study the actual wild animals to see what is encountered in each.
It's complicated, of course, by human incursions having perhaps changed what was the ferret diet until recent times so what it thought of as the wild diet may be different from what was eatten until recent centuries but we have no way to know...