Mustela nigripes

The black footed ferret is a critically endangered nocturnal weasel of North America. It has also been called the American Polecat and Prairie Dog Hunter.

## Range

It needs about 9 square miles of territory filled with prairie dog colonies to survive. In the wild it almost entirely subsides on prairie dogs, of which there are several species. Therefore in order to live somewhere it has to be 9 square miles of prairie dog colonies. There has to be numerous large colonies to sustain it year-round.

This source notes it as being in Colorado's Sonoran and Boreal ranges. It is noted under the older name *Putorius nigripes*. It extends north and southwards across the Western plains, from extreme southern Alberta and Ottawa, Canada, to extreme northern Mexico.

## Interactions with humans

Noah Watts mentions that several tribes used them for food or religious purposes. The tribes reported are the Crow, Blackfoot, Sioux, Cheyenne, and Pawnee. However I do not know the exact tribes and clans this refers to.

They were considered to be extinct for a long time. One man reports that in 1979 people still thought they were extinct. They were rediscovered by a shepherd dog in Meeteetse, Wyoming on September 26, 1981.

Due to the ferret being critically endangered conservationists have tried hard to preserve it and reintroduce it into the wild. They've even gone so far as to become the first mammal native to North America to be cloned. The ferret was named Elizabeth-Ann, and was cloned from a ferret named Willa (or perhaps Willow), who died in 1988.

Noticeably during prairie dog pest removal some are sacrificed to organizations that take care of predators of the prairie dog, including this predator. There are laws regulating whether live or dead prairie dogs get to be sent to black-footed ferret rehabilitation programs.

## Name

The black-footed ferret is named such due to it's marking resemblance to the domesticated ferret, of which Americans are familiar. And also its black limbs. This is why it is not called a weasel. Polecats are unfamiliar to Americans, and thus it did not get that common name. Websites mention that it has other names such as the American Polecat and the Prairie Dog Hunter, however I do not know if those are dialectal terms or historical. Does anyone ever call it that?

They were first documented as *Putorius nigripes*, credited to J.J. Audubon and J. Bachman. This was given to one that was observed near the Platte River. The word "putorius" is Latin for polecat, and may be related to further words to describe the strong scent mustelids apparently have (but it could be a coincidence). *Nigripes* is a modification of "black" and "foot" in Latin. Thus, the black footed polecat, or black footed ferret. The modern genus *Mustela* comes from the Latin word for weasel. I do not know when it became *putorius nigripes* to *mustela nigripes*.

## Media

* In The Golden Compass, the character Pantalaimon was changed from an ermine to a black footed ferret by the developers of the movie. This was to raise awareness for the endangered animal.
* National Geographic published a YouTube video of members of the World Wildlife Fund capturing wild individuals in South Dakota and vaccinating them.
* Noah Watts, Indigenous-American voice actor for the Assassin's Creed III protagonist, released an episode of Endangered Tales dramatizing and detailing the thievery habits of ferrets in the old Western days.
* The Cheyenne Mountain Zoo runs a black-footed ferret program and they have released some captive-bred individuals in Pueblo County, which was shown on the local news.

## See also

* Mustela
* Ferrets
* Weasels
* Mustela putorius

## References

1. ↑ https://www.jstor.org/stable/4063298?seq=2#metadata\_info\_tab\_contents
2. ↑ https://nhpbs.org/natureworks/blackfootedferret.htm
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 https://www.endangeredtales.com/black-footed-ferret
4. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U-YCXjf4\_I
5. ↑ https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/black-footed-ferret-facts-the-masked-bandits-of-the-northern-great-plains
6. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsyFScw3Lc0
7. ↑ https://cpw.state.co.us/learn/Pages/SOC-Black-tailedPrairieDogApplication.aspx
8. ↑ https://www.animalspot.net/black-footed-ferret.html
9. ↑ https://www.fws.gov/species/black-footed-ferret-mustela-nigripes
10. ↑ https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=putorius&oldid=65436395
11. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IOXtYmtRG8
12. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfjba8aY7hI