Interpreting Ferret Body Language part 3
Frenetic nibbling. If I can put my finger on one gesture that may be appeasement, it would be frenetic nibbling. In this case, a ferret will groom its partner -or more likely your arm -with its incisor teeth. It moves very rapidly but never opens its mouth wide enough to bear the canine teeth. It is the same motion for addressing a sudden itch, and may be interspersed with frantic licks. I know many ferrets that use this to say, "Please, put me down. I want to play, not cuddle!"
Locomotive Displays
Locomotive displays are used by one animal to signal others in the group that it intends to move. Horses are masters of locomotive displays; you can watch a lead mare for just a few seconds and tell where she intends to go and how quickly she intends to get there. Wolves, birds and primates also have numerous locomotive displays.
I've never really seen a locomotive display in a ferret. Ferrets will usually follow anyone who walks by, but they never seem to care if anyone goes where they go, except in cases concerning the weasel war dance.
Mating Displays
These are not likely to be observed by the average ferret owner, and many ferret breeders of my acquaintance do not know that ferrets actually have courtship behaviors at all. Hobs do cruise for babes by trundling around while making a "buck-buck-buck" kind of sound (ferrets have an extensive range of sound signals, but that's a subject for another time). A jill will flirt with a hob by rolling on her back and pushing at him with her feet, making the same noise.
Other Behavioral Displays
The butt scoot. Over the years, I often had calls from people who noticed their ferrets butt scooting. Did they have worms? No, they were just laying claim to their food or pointing out their presence.
The exasperation ferret owners feel over the never-ending battle to litter train these animals comes from the fact that when it comes to claiming its territory, a ferret or polecat is far more reliant on olfactory signals than even a dog. When we housebreak a dog, we think we are teaching the dog to "go outside." This isn't true from the dog's point of view. Dogs want to leave their feces at the edge of their territories, where dogs from other packs will be sure to find them and be warned off. By making the dog defecate outdoors, we teach the dog that the edge of its territory is outside the house, not inside.
The ferret is just as territorial and feels the same imperative to mark the boundaries of its territory. In this case, however, the boundaries of territory are the walls of your house. The ferret will mark that territorial boundary, come what may. You can teach a ferret to be sneaky about it, but you simply cannot teach it to never do it; you cannot teach it that the limits of its territory are inside a particular box and nowhere else.
When dogs eliminate outside, very often you will see them use their hind feet to scratch the dirt around the pile they leave behind. When they do this, they reinforce their anal scent with their foot pad scent.
Many ferrets and just about all the polecats I've had do the same bit of additional marking. However, not having scent glands in their toe pads as dogs do, they butt scoot. They put their bums on the floor and pull themselves along with their forefeet, as though wiping themselves on the floor.
When polecats butt scoot, they leave a little anal scent, pointing to the pile of feces they left. This leaves a very complex and clear signal to any polecat coming by that might think of taking over that bit of real estate.
Fortunately, I've never known a ferret to deposit any anal scent while butt scooting. In fact, less than half of my ferrets ever butt scooted at all, and very few did it every time they eliminated. (Flash was the only one I ever had that always scooted.)
Vibrating tail. Sometimes, a ferret in the grip of great anxiety or anticipation will vibrate its tail back and forth, very quickly, for a second or two.
I've only ever known one person who was able to consistently get ferrets to do this. It usually happened when a ferret was in a tube -or this person's pant leg -and could hear something exciting happening, but couldn't get to it.
Interspecies Communication
Not only do ferrets have a repertoire of signals they instinctively use with one another, but I've found that from time to time, a ferret can train a human to understand a signal it made up. An example of this is the time my favorite dear old ferret Bug Bug taught me a new trick. Many years ago, Bug Bug gave birth to twins.
Continued on the Interpreting Ferret Body Language Part 4
