If that's a ferret, then I'm the Queen of Tonga!

I came across an article about the Black-footed Ferret on the DesertUSA site and this photo was there, implying that it was a picture of a BFF kit!

There was also a video of this little creature, which was found by someone, and the clip was entitled "the Ferret"!

Good grief ... no wonder people think ferrets are wild animals when mistakes like this are made! Grumph!

If you look at this picture of a pine marten, taken from the Wikipedia site, it looks to me that the little kit belongs to the martes family rather than to the mustela one. But it's certainly is a cute looking animal and I'd love to know exactly what it is so if anyone knows, please tell me :-)

But anyway, back to the actual article about black-footed ferrets.

I confess to being irritated by the emotive language used when writing about most of the mustelid family, be they weasels, BFFs, or even our own pet ferrets. Just look at the article on the DesertUSA site ...

The first sentence talks about the BFF being "a masked, furtive and efficient KILLER" ... further on the heading refers to a "consummate predator" ... then the next paragraph mentions how it "belongs to the weasels, or the mustelids, a family of 65 FEROCIOUS meat-eating species..."

Why are members of the mustelid group so often referred to in this manner? I mean, heck - how often do you hear the lion described as MAJESTIC, or the cheetah as being REGAL or FAST. They, too, are meat-eating carnivores which chase and kill their prey but they don't seem to cop the tags which make them sound like vicious, bloodthirsty killing machines like the mustelid family!

Hear the word "predator" and I think of the great white shark, not the BFF!

Double grumph!