Comment by tzs | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tzs | Hacker News Reader

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Has this happened in the 48 states (all but California and Hawaii) where ferrets are not banned? How about Canada where they appear to be legal in all provinces?

All I've been able to find on this is the paper "Environmental Impact and Relative Invasiveness of Free-Roaming Domestic Carnivores—a North American Survey of Governmental Agencies" [1] which looked at the impact of non-native domestic carnivores (dogs, cats, and ferrets) in the US and Canada.

It says this in the discussion section:

> Aside from an occasional “stray”, there were no reports of “feral (breeding)” ferrets; nor were there reports that of “free-living”, or “naturalized” ferrets anywhere in the continental United States or Canada, including California. More importantly, no jurisdiction reported ferrets impacting local (native) wildlife, including ground-nesting birds, or threatened, endangered and sensitive species.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5664037/

Edit: this comment seems quite controversial. In a few minutes it got several up votes, then quickly got twice as many down votes, then quickly returned to about even. I'm quite confused by this.

The idea domesticated ferrets would escape, breed, and threaten wildlife if one of the most hilarious concepts I've ever seen, starting with the fact that getting a ferret that isn't already spayed or neutered is basically impossible, and ending with the fact that domestic ferrets tend to get fat, are lazy, and especially in the case of one of my previous ferrets, remarkably dumb.

Of a dozen ferrets I've had in my life, I can think of one that might be able to find and capture food well enough to survive on his own. And he couldn't reproduce.

It's absolutely shocking to me still that California has this weird villainous perception of these basically elongated rabbits.

>The idea domesticated ferrets would escape, breed, and threaten wildlife if one of the most hilarious concepts I've ever seen

New Zealanders probably don't find it so funny

Ferrets specifically released in large quantity over many years to breed in the wild and threaten wildlife, which is the case in New Zealand (they were trying to get rid of the rabbits), is hardly comparable to pet ferrets which are mostly incapable of breeding and which usually don't survive long if they do get into the wild.

> elongated rabbits

That eat meat.

After looking it up a bit more, ironically, they were bread to hunt rabbits!

Rats are illegal in Alberta, and it is one of the few populated areas of the world without rats. Of course, the ban was put into place before the province was over-run with them, and an aggressive rat-killing program was put into place along it's eastern border with Manitoba to stop them migrating any further.

https://www.domyown.com/images/content/rat_distribution_map_...

"Edit: this comment seems quite controversial. ..."

You're not alone, I watched votes on my various comments on this matter oscillate in both directions then settle near one or zero. I thought my comments rather mild and I wasn't deliberately trying to stir up controversy.

A while back I also encountered this sensitivity and tetchiness when discussing veganism. Seems some people consider such subjects verboten and should not be discussed on the internet.

Re your 'Edit' comment again, update to my earlier reply. Well, same has happened to me again. It would be interesting to know why so many people get angry at relatively neutral comment and won't say why in open debate (especially so on HN): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31957321#31957871

:-)

Tasmania and Australia proactively eradicate feral colonies.

It's highly unlikely, given that released/escaped pet ferrets can't breed. Ferrets purchased for the pet trade are all sterilized as a ferret in heat doesn't end well.

Females can die if they go into heat and don't have a mate to breed with, and male ferrets can get very hostile around a female in heat.

> no jurisdiction reported ferrets impacting native wildlife

Hum, so what do they found that those ferrets eat? tacos?

Most places have a variety of animals such as rabbits and mice and rats in sufficient numbers that a few getting eaten by the rare escaped domestic ferrets won't impact the population of those animals.

Pet ferrets usually don't last long if they escape and almost always are fixed so they cannot breed. They aren't likely to spread very far from where they escaped, and so the wild animals they might kill are going to almost all be the kind of animals that thrive around humans.

Allowing ferrets might even be a net positive for the local native species, because some people who would have gotten a cat might instead choose a ferret, and an escaped ferret would likely do much less damage than an escaped cat (and that's not even taking into account that many people regularly let their cats roam free outside, which I don't think many ferret owners do).

> Edit: this comment seems quite controversial

Pet talk on the internet is like that

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