Polecats

[Tengu]

Do polecats vary in colour?

I was reading a book where a polecat is described as `a big weasel brown coated with a white mask`

I thought wild polecats were marked like my Ming (who has black legs and tail, with a creamy body flecked with black guard hairs)

This is called `Fitch`

But I have a BW photo in an old book of a much darker animal, presumably brown.

 

[hiraeth]

Does this help?
www.britishwildlifecentre.co.uk/animals/polecat.htm

 

[Tengu]

Yes, thats the polecat I was talking about

 

[Mike B]

The simple answer to your question is yes.
Polecats can vary in both colour and markings,In Wakefield Museum where much of the waterton collection is housed,(click here ) there is a European Polecat that very much resembles a domesticated ferret of Albino type,but it isn't an Albino that's its standard colouring.
Also many of the Polecat types that are now beginning to spread quite well as wild, owe their ancestary to lost/abandoned domesticated Ferrets,who conversely owe their ancestary to the original wild Polecat.
God even I'm confused now should've just left the answer as yes lol.
Mike B...

 

[bushwacker bob]

They all smell the same in the dark

 

[john scrivy]

I had a male polecat ferret a few years back must say he was a absulute jem the perfect pet

 

[hiraeth]

I had a male polecat ferret a few years back must say he was a absulute jem the perfect pet

Kept them for years, and can honestly say have never been bitten by one im thinking of getting some again as my son keeps nagging for them, as a bonus they kept the garden snail free too.

 

[Dean]

I have had polecats/ferrets for most of my life, I have been bitten by one, but he was given to us from a guy who did not interact with the poor animal which had become ferral. But with time and a little patience, this instinct to bite can be trained out of them. But other wise all the other's I've had have been the best pets one could ask for.
My current is a polecat cross ferret and to be honest he is the happest one I have had, especially when he's up to mischief or when he's down a hole. He has me in stiches when he does his war dance, one time my neighbour had mistaken this for aggresion because he was showing his teeth and bouncing toward him, so I told them that's how he shows he's excited.