Feral Ferret
Ffered
Mustela Furo
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Status:
Localised within Wales, mainly found along the north coast and down in the south Wales valleys. A few records from within Snowdonia National Park. The ferret is a domesticated version of the true polecat, Mustela putorius.
Animals in the wild are thought mainly to be escapees, often ill-suited to survival. Males tend to lack the aggression and fighting skills to hold their own against true, wild polecats. Occasionally, female ferrets will survive to breed with polecat males, but often they do not have adequate hunting skills to rear a litter of young. In some areas of the UK, where wild polecats are still rare or extinct, breeding populations of feral ferrets have established themselves.
Where inter-breeding does occur, the phenotypic characteristics (features) of wild polecats tend to dominate. It makes sense that the darker pelage is more successful in hunting than the albino. Other characteristics, such as aggression, are more prevalent and there are ecological reasons why this should be so. Because of this, there is not the same concern over feral ferrets diluting the gene pool of pure polecats, as is the case with the wild cat in Scotland.