Photo by LTSHears (Wikimedia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nPerhaps this ferret as the mask of a thief for a reason.\u00a0 You see these adorable little animals use their slender body to sneak into the homes of prairie dogs.\u00a0 Once inside the Black-Footed Ferret will help themselves to your TV, the jar of money on the top of the fridge and yes even the crystal serving dish you received on your wedding day, which incidentally you will only use if the Queen happens to pop over for dinner one night.\u00a0 Of course, none of this is true, the Black-Footed Ferret is simply breaking into the prairie dogs home so they can find a nice snack which just happens to be the prairie dog.\u00a0 I am sure they would have preferred the ferret to just take the crystal bowl instead.<\/p>\n
As you can imagine the success of the Black-Footed Ferret depends heavily on the population of the prairie dog.\u00a0 Unfortunately, during the 20th century prairie dogs were hunted and destroyed since their elaborate underground homes caused havoc to farmer fields. This huge decline almost wiped out our ferret friends by 1987.\u00a0 Luckily a captive breeding program began and the Black-Footed Ferret is now being successfully re-introduced into the wild.\u00a0 As you can imagine, the success rate is low in some cases as a result of disease, predators and of course the lack of survival skills.\u00a0 I am willing to bet that it would have been a whole lot easier to just not wipe out the animal to begin with.\u00a0 The question I have for all of you today is do we ever learn from our past mistakes?<\/p>\n
That just about does it for the Black-Footed Ferret.\u00a0 Enjoy the rest of your day folks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Another beautiful day and another fascinating Wild Fact.\u00a0 Well, at least I hope it will be fascinating for all of us.\u00a0 Today’s animal was suggested by my loving mother who happened to watch a show on the Black-Footed Ferret the other day.\u00a0 It is great when people recommend animals to write about as that really is the toughest part of Wild Facts.\u00a0 So thank you to my mom and everyone else who brings great suggestions forward.\u00a0 Now lets get into the nitty gritty of today’s fact. This may be incredibly shocking to some of you but the Black-Footed Ferret actually <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3963,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60,4024],"tags":[348,1644,1649,1645,1648,4025,1646,1647],"yoast_head":"\n
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