"Black-footed ferrets are North America’s only native ferret species and were thought to be extinct in 1979.
When the species was miraculously rediscovered in 1981 in Wyoming, these long, quirky mammals quickly rose to become the center of dedicated conservation efforts.
At that time, the Wyoming Game Department and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services brought 18 ferrets into human care to begin cooperative breeding programs, like the one at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Virginia.
Between captive breeding, wildlife reintroductions, habitat restoration, and even genetic cloning, one of the continent's most endangered mammals is now seeing a comeback.
Perhaps the cutest manifestation of this conservation work is a new litter, born at the NZCBI on May 11.
Since 1989, 1,218 black-footed ferret kits have been born at NZCBI, with 750 reintroduced to the wild. Currently, 48 ferrets live at NZCBI, including one-year-old female Aristides, who gave birth to the new litter of six kits last week.
Last breeding season, NZCBI raised 51 ferret kits. Now with 2024’s season underway, animal care staff are closely monitoring the ferrets’ behavior through the institute’s Black-Footed Ferret Cam (a temporary live webcam the public can also view on the NZCBI website)...
Right now, the kits are still tiny, weighing less than 10 grams, with a thin layer of white fur covering their bodies. Their well-known mask-like markings and namesake dark feet will appear in the next few weeks. Then, they’ll start venturing out of their den and exploring the burrows of their habitat, akin to the tunnels they’d find in the wild."
sherlock holmes deduces you are trans before you've figured it out yourself and refers to you with those pronouns and then when you look confused is like "ah...had you not arrived at that conclusion yet?" and wafts away in his dressing gown to smoke seventeen pipes, leaving you in a gender crisis
so apparently “asexual reproduction” is no longer the preferred scientific term, so if anyone makes a sponge joke or whatever just scream “IT’S AGAMETIC KNOW YOUR SCIENCE” and throw a textbook at them