15 Facts About Ferrets That Will Make You Realize How Little You Actually Know About Them

They're the domesticated version of the European polecat. 

There have been many reports of them attacking babies while they sleep. 

Ferret-like creatures first appeared in literature written by Greek scholars Aristotle and Aristophanes. Remains that resembled ferrets were found in medieval castles in Belgium. It's believed that they may have been owned as pets by lower class people, since there was so little documentation of them.  

They can produce way too much estrogen, which can lead to death, anemia or clotting. 

Hunting rabbits with ferrets is a sport in England. They can burrow and trap a rabbit underground. They wear special collars that allow their owners to find them and dig them out. 

Also called American polecats, black-footed ferrets, eat unsuspecting prairie dogs. 

But they're not very good at it. 

In the wild, ferrets perform a dance to lure their prey into a trance. Domesticated ferrets do the same dance, but their version is just for play. 

This endurance game takes place between two ferrets and a guy with loose pants.Two ferrets are place in a loose pair of pants that someone is wearing and left to fight inside of them under the participant can't stand it anymore. 

In the '90s, MIT neuroscientists reconfigured the brains of baby ferrets so that their visual cortexes connected to the audio cortexes. They expected them to go blind, by their audio cortexes actually started functioning like a visual cortex and they were fine. 

Since they're so small, they've actually be used to help push wires through pipes. 

In Argentina, some people were tricked into buying what they thought was a poodle. It was later discovered that someone had drugged ferrets with a growth hormone and tried to pass them off as dogs. 

Ferrets have been used to bring a falcon's prey closer to it. 

In London, ferret racing is a popular sport where they run through drainpipes.