Interpreting Ferret Body Language
Depending upon how well an animal can actually see, it can use its body to convey a varying number of subtleties about its state of mind to members of its own species, and those of other species that care to learn the language.
Even some people who know very little about dogs and cats believe that dogs "smile" and cats make ?friendly eyes?. Ferret postural communication is less refined than that of more widespread pets. Ferrets have notoriously poor vision, and unlike dogs and cats, ferret body language is anything but subtle.
Ferret physical and facial displays can be broken down into several fairly broad categories: invitational, disinclinational, assertion/aggression, acquiescing/submissive, locomotive and mating.
Invitational Displays
The play face and the weasel war dance.
Of all the various displays a ferret exhibits, the one that most immediately comes to mind is the weasel war dance. This is the ferret equivalent of a dog's elbows-to-the-ground "let's play" gesture. To most people, the weasel war dance looks like a random fit. The ferret flings itself into the air, rolling over and over, often banging its head on waIls and chair legs. Many years ago, when buying a car, I mentioned to the dealer that I had ferrets. "I had one too once " he said "but I got rid of it because it was possessed." I asked him to describe this "possession," and what he described was the weasel war dance in all its joyful glory.
For all its exuberance, the war dance isn't random. It begins and ends with the ferret with both front feet on the ground, head up and mouth slightly open, directed at the ferret or person from whom it wants attention. The proper response from another ferret to a weasel war dance is to do the same in return (which, in essence, says, "Okay, I'll play with you"). Thus, the weasel war dance usually initiates a bout of play fighting between a pair of ferrets. Ferrets are just as likely to dance at people, cats and dogs as at other ferrets.
The open-mouth play face usually seen at the end of the war dance is almost universal among carnivores. It's only the members of the weasel family (ferrets, polecats, stoats, long-tailed weasels, least weasels, and possibly mink) that may use it as a way to attract prey.
Carolyn King, a leading mustelid researcher, tells this story: "Weasels are sometimes seen to catch birds by what is claimed to be a psychological trick known as the 'weasel's dance of death.' [At one point, a stoat out hunting was watched as it] ran rapidly in small circles, rolling over and turning somersaults.
The dance was watched intently by four water hens, which slowly walked toward it from the water's edge. Occasionally the stoat stopped and definitely (Lawson, the observer, emphasized this) looked directly at them. When the hens were in range, the stoat would charge them, whereupon they would scatter. But the stoat started dancing again, and the hens kept returning to watch." A pub in Manchester, England, is known as "The Waltzing Weasel" in commemoration of this behavior.
Sometimes a ferret will war dance at you, and when you try to play with it, it runs a meter or so away and starts again. Follow it! It's trying to tell you something. You will soon arrive at an empty food bowl, a toy stuck under a chair or a comrade with a toilet paper tube stuck on its head. So pay close attention the next time your ferret war dances -there's method in its madness.
The attention response. Probably the most studied of the ferret's invitational displays (or at least the ones that are not directly agonistic) is the attention response. Polecats especially will peer out of their burrows or tubes, their heads high and held parallel to the ground.
The head itself is often held at right angles to the body. The animal stays very still in this position for some seconds as it tries to use sound and smell to home in on whatever attracted its attention.
When walking from place to place, a polecat will often stop every couple of feet and stand still in the attention response pose, listening for prey or predators larger than itself. I noticed that in Mongolian polecats, all the animals in a group will stop what they're doing, and either hide or assume the same posture if one of the group goes on alert.
As a rule, domestic ferrets don't watch each other as closely once they are older than 6 weeks of age. One animal's attention response is usually ignored by the others. However, domestic ferrets will walk around with their heads in the "alert" posture.
I've always fancied that they are sauntering around in search of sin when they're doing this. When a domestic ferret walks around with its back straight and its head up, it's usually looking to see if there are any trash cans that can be tipped over or flower pots that can be dug up while nobody's looking.
Continued on the Interpreting Ferret Body Language Part 2
