People are confused about the difference between weasels and ferrets.
Weasel is a small mammal that looks like a weasel, has weasel-like habits, and does weasel-like things.
Ferret is also a tiny mammal with weasel-like habits, and many people think they’re the same thing! But they’re not!
They look similar but have different behaviours in many ways.
By using this article as an example of how different weasels and ferrets are, people will hopefully get it right in the future!
Weasels and ferrets are different animals.
A weasel is a small mammal that looks like a weasel, has weasel-like habits, and does weasel-like things.
Ferrets are also small mammals with weasel-like habits, but they sometimes do different things than weasels.
They look similar, but they act differently in many ways!
Weasel is a small mammal that looks like a weasel, has weasel-like habits, and does weasel-like things.
Then, it was with some distress that I sat in a South American forest recently and discovered just how many of those weasel-like habits weasels have.
While my colleagues were busy crawling through the underbrush around me—a manoeuvre is known as “line transect”—I listened to their machetes grate against the branches they had just cut or watched them push at vines with their booted feet.
Then came the animal sounds: a parrot cried out from somewhere above our heads, monkeys shrieked alarm calls a few hundred meters away, downslope and hurtled over the treetops in noisy troops, sloths called back and forth across the canopy.
At one point, I looked up to find someone’s boot (not mine) only inches from a huge, iridescent blue poison dart frog pinned to the leaf litter by its toes.
It seemed like an auspicious time for something to eat us.
And it did: weasels!
They leapt out at us from behind trees and bushes while we were busy doing fieldwork. I quickly got used to hearing my colleagues yell “¡El tejón!” when one of these short-tailed predators leapt out of the forest around them.
Still, after a few days, I began noticing that every time someone let out a startled cry or hurriedly scooped up their machete after answering nature’s call in the brush, they would then pause and cock their head sideways as if listening to something.
I could hear it, too: the faint rustling of leaves as a weasel made its escape high in the treetops.
Weasels are notorious for their aggressive hunting behaviour and prolific reproduction – both factors help them take advantage of forest environments with plenty of small mammals to prey on.
Depending on their exposure, they also have distinctive markings and can change colour from greyish brown to white (see video below).
It’s not surprising, then, that weasels are found worldwide, but while most species live in North America or Europe, others persist throughout Africa, Asia and Australia.
Weasels seem particularly well-adapted to the Neotropical forests my colleagues and I were studying, with at least nine species found in South America.
They also occur throughout Central America, but unfortunately, I missed a chance to see one of them about halfway through our fieldwork:
my colleagues and I were investigating the likely occurrence of another weasel species on a different part of our study area when we heard that this particular animal was spotted only minutes away from us at a neighbouring site.
Ferret is also a small mammal with weasel-like habits, but they sometimes do different things than weasels.
The ferret is also a small mammal with weasel-like habits, but they sometimes do different things than weasels.
For example, when a ferret smells something interesting on the grass or forest floor, it may poke around for a moment to find the source of the scent before moving on.
On the other hand, the weasel will often dig into the ground to get at prey it has smelled there.
Ferrets are also a lot more social than weasels, and ferrets in the same area may interact more with one another.
These differences mean that the term “weasel” is sometimes used to describe not just stoats and ermines but all Mustela sub-genus (the genus that includes weasels and martens).
This article will refer only to the members of the Mustela sub-genus found in North America. See Weasel for info on other species of mustelids.
Weasels are carnivores.
They eat small animals like mice, voles, rabbits, birds, fish, frogs, snakes and insects.
Sometimes they’ll turn plant matter into food by eating eggs or killing the birds or rabbits that eat plants.
Weasels need water to drink, so where there isn’t enough rain for them to find it in the soil, they will make a hole in the ice above frozen lakes and ponds.
They can also find water by digging up other mammals’ burrows and drinking the water left from their recent baths.
They are great hunters because of their long bodies and short legs, long tails, big paws with sharp claws, keen eyesight and hearing.
It is common to see weasels hunting separately, but nobody knows why they do this.
Many guesses about what this behaviour means, but no one can say why weasels hunt like this.
This is something that scientists are still trying to figure out, but they have narrowed the possibilities down to two main ideas:
Weasels hunt like this because it increases their chance of catching prey.
If one ferret spots a vole and starts chasing it while another ferret sees where the chase is going, the first ferret might not know if there is an easier way to catch or kill its prey until it actually catches and kills it.
By hunting separately, weasels can each find easier ways to catch their prey and then meet later to share what they found.
Weasels hunt like this because it helps them avoid becoming someone else’s meal. A lot of predators eat other animals as part of their diet.
Some predators, like the owl, eat just a few animals, while others, like the weasel and hawk, eat many different kinds of creatures to get all of the nutrients they need.
But weasels can’t just hunt anything that moves because some animals are more dangerous than others.
If a hungry weasel ran across an animal, it couldn’t kill right away and attacked anyway.
The other animal might fight back hard enough to injure or even kill the weasel seriously.
By hunting separately, each ferret can find prey that is small enough to handle on its own.
They look similar but act differently in many ways!
Weasels and ferrets are similar in many ways.
They both have long, slender bodies that we might typically consider “slimy” or “slippery”, weasel-like faces and flattened noses.
We might also say weasel-like characteristics about ferrets due to their weasel-like behaviour. They both have what we call weasel teeth – sharp, pointy teeth!
These mammals are different in important ways, though. For example, weasels are carnivores (meat-eaters), while ferrets are omnivores (eat meat and plants).
Ferrets also live in dens while weasels live out in the wild. Weasels hunt small animals like mice, rabbits, and birds, while ferrets mostly eat cat food or dry kibble.
Weasels are small animals (about 2-5 pounds), usually black with white bellies, tan backs, and a long tail.
Ferrets can be either solid black in colour or have white spots like some weasel species that live out in the wild such as the ermine.
They also come in other colours: brown, yellow, red, and even white!
Their tails look similar to a weasel’s tail because they’re both long and skinny.
However, ferrets’ tails tend to be furrier than weasels’ since they don’t go into their dens during cold weather as weasels do.
Ferrets don’t hibernate in the same way that weasels do.
Instead, they enter a state called torpor when it’s cold.
They are not completely unconscious during this time and can wake up quickly if necessary (i.e. to get food or water)!
Weasels usually live for about three years, while ferrets typically live between 7-9 years!
Okay, so now I’ve covered how these two similar animals are different, but why would you want a ferret over a weasel? Well, there are several reasons:
1 – Ferrets are domesticated like cats and dogs! If you train them correctly, they can be very friendly with people!
2 – Ferrets aren’t as dependent on having a den as weasels are. They can sleep in a crate or other small environment if they need to!
3 – Ferrets have been domesticated for thousands of years longer than weasels have, so they’re probably a bit more adapted to living with humans.
4 – Weasel teeth grow constantly and must be filed down while ferret teeth do not grow back. So that’s one less thing you’ll have to worry about when you get an older ferret!
5 – Ferrets like cat food but NOT dog food! If your pet eats dry kibble, then it will most likely enjoy the same kind of food as a ferret does (and vice versa)!
6 – Ferrets don’t have an odour! Weasels do have a strong, musky smell.
7 – Ferrets don’t leave giant weasel tracks everywhere they go (which we won’t get into too much detail about)!
Conclusion
The weasel and ferret are small mammals with similar appearances, but they do not share the same habits.
They look alike in some ways but act differently when it comes to other things.
You may have heard that they’re related or even the same animal – this is false.
It’s easy to see how people would be confused because of their similarities, which adds more confusion since these two animals actually behave so differently!
