Smooth operators

Unfairly maligned as a sneaky troublemaker, the quicksilver ferret is a characterful, curious and highly intelligent creature–with fascinating regal and cultural trappings to boot

- Octavia Pollock

WHAT do Genghis Khan, scientists at the National Accelerator Laboratory, Illinois, US, and a small boy on the South Downs have in common? Lithe, inquisitive, quicksilver ferrets.

That boy, James McConville, grew up to found the West Sussex Warreners, a thriving group of ferreters: 'It’s three animals working together as a team, ferret, dog, human, to do a job. It’s magical.'

Ferrets have done that job for thousands of years, for the ruler of the Mongolian hordes on the warren-riddled steppes, in Egyptian ships and on the dusty hills of the Peloponnese (Greek references date to 450BC). Pliny the Elder writes of ferreting and the Romans may have brought the animals to British soil with their rabbits. Ferrets and ferreting were mentioned in court rolls in 1223 and as part of the Royal Household in 1281. Ladies are depicted ferreting in the Queen Mary Psalter of about 1340 and the 15th-century Sherborne Missal, a manuscript scribed by the monk John Whas and illuminated by one John Siferwas, has an exquisite image of longdogs chasing a hare, with mustelids ready to pounce. Such scenes were aristocratic: in 1390, a law decreed that ferrets could only be kept by those earning more than 40s a year, a substantial sum intended to put them beyond the reach of poachers. Elizabeth I herself is believed to have had ferrets; the 'Ermine Portrait' may show her with a 'fitch', an old word for the animal, rather than a stoat in ermine.

The exact origins of Mustela putorius furo cannot be pinpointed. Linnaeus gave credence to Ancient Greek historian Strabo and cited Africa, as does a Russian engraving of 1909 that names them Afrikanski horek, but they are accepted as domesticated polecats, Mustela putorius. The furo of the name comes from the Latin for thief, furonem