Ferret Day

On May 2 Ferret Day is celebrated. This day has been officially celebrated since 2014. The idea came a few years earlier from New Yorker Carol Roche.

Ferret Day was established to raise awareness of this animal.

Ferret (Lat. Putorius Cuvier) is a species of carnivorous mammal of the genus Mustela of the family Mustelidae. The fauna of Ukraine includes two species of ferrets:

European polecat (Lat. Mustela putorius Lesson);

steppe polecat (Lat. Mustela eversmanni Lesson);

These animals have a protected status.

The reasons for the decline in the ferret population are: lack of food due to human agricultural activities, flooding of burrows with meltwater and steppe fires, and, most importantly, changing environmental conditions.

In the past, the collection of our zoo has European polecat and steppe ferret. To date, the collection of Mykolaiv Zoo does not have rare species of ferrets, but here you can see the domesticated form of ferret (Lat. Mustela putorius furo). These nimble and cute animals received the status of a domestic animal about 2500-3000 years ago. Leonardo da Vinci's painting "Lady with an ermine" depicts a domesticated ferret, not an ermine, this version was followed by Wilhelm von Bode (German art historian, collector and museum worker, one of the founders of modern museum studies, years of life: December 10, 1845 - March 1, 1929, Berlin).

These animals were kept to fight rodents. The origin of the domesticated ferret is not definitively clarified. The hypothesis of its European origin is common – it is descended from the European polecat, which is confirmed by phylogenetic studies. According to another version, it comes from the domesticated form of the African polecat. Others suggest that the ancestors of the ferret were steppe polecats, and they were domesticated somewhere in the Lower Volga region or Southern Ural. There are many color variations of the domesticated ferrets.

We have a pair of domesticated ferrets - male named Pasha and female named Rufa. They were brought by visitors from their private collections. You can see them near the enclosure for otters.

Dear visitors! We urge you, before deciding to keep these animals at home, to think carefully about whether you can take on such a great responsibility and provide proper living conditions for them.