All across the animal kingdom, animals engage in dramatic and elaborate courting displays. Maybe they are birds who do a little dance, or fish who construct attractive nests in the hope of enticing a willing female. And then of course, there are the black-foot ferrets, whose mating rituals are not quite as romantic.
They grab their intended by the tail and pull them into their den.
“I personally think flowers and dinner works better,” quipped one guy in the comments section of this video, which show the “flirting” behavior of a pair of black-footed ferrets living in captivity at the National Black-footed Ferret Conservation Center in Colorado. And that’s a good thing. These ferrets are actually part of a breeding program devoted to bringing back this tiny creature from the brink of extinction.
Related: Story of Stolen Ferret Returned to Pet Store Raises So Many Questions
The Amazing Story of the Black-Footed Ferret
“Currently, there are approximately two-hundred eighty black-footed ferrets at captive breeding facilities like the National Black-footed Ferret Conservation Center,” reads the caption on this adorable — if a little aggressive—video. “This successful captive breeding program each year releases black-footed ferrets into the wild at several reintroduction sites across the West.”
The story of the black-footed ferrets is a wild one. Their numbers declined precipitously in the twentieth century due to the declining population of prairie dogs (their main source of food) as well as an outbreak of plague. In fact, they were declared extinct in 1980.
But a year later, a small wild population was found in Wyoming, and a breeding program was started to bulk up the numbers and reintroduce the animals to eight states in the mountain west of the country. Now, there are nearly four hundred individual ferrets living in the wild, and hundreds more in breeding facilities.
Watching this video now definitely reminds people of their rediscovery and how important it was for conservationists in the west.
“We thought they were extinct,” writes one observer in the comments. “I was working on a team that included some U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services folks when the word went out that some had been found. If I recall correctly, you never saw people so excited.”
Black-footed ferrets are mainly solitary creatures, except during mating season or when raising young. They live in prairie dog colonies and prairie dogs make up to ninety percent of their diet.
The Breeding of Black-Footed Ferrets
The clip shows a pair of ferrets. One is half-hidden in a hole in his cage, from which he repeatedly darts out, trying to grab the other—presumably female—ferret. Eventually he indeed grabs her by the tail and pulls her under.
It seems a bit extreme, like the old saw about a caveman bopping a woman over the head and dragging her back to a cave. But black-footed ferrets are not the type to form long-term partner relationships. In the wild they are thought to be polygynous.
However, what might be right for a small breeding population of critically endangered mustelids should not be held up as a model of behavior for higher order mammals—you know, like humans.
“I mean sadly I think there are too many guys who think human flirting is exactly this!” Bemoans one woman in comments. “But what a great video!”
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