Black-footed Ferret

Mustela nigripes

Black-footed Ferret (Mustela nigripes): The Ferret Zoos Brought Back

The black-footed ferret is North America's only native ferret, a masked night hunter of prairie dog towns. It was twice thought extinct, and every black-footed ferret alive today comes from the last wild ferrets caught in Wyoming in the 1980s and bred in zoos and breeding centres.

Habitat

Prairie dog colonies on Great Plains grassland

Size

46-61 cm long including a 13-15 cm tail; about 0.6-1.1 kg

Diet

Mostly prairie dogs, plus mice and other small mammals

Range

Reintroduced sites from Canada to Mexico in the North American Great Plains

Conservation

Endangered (IUCN; US Endangered Species Act)

Authority

Audubon & Bachman, 1851

Habitat & range

Black-footed ferrets once lived across the Great Plains, mountain basins and semi-arid grasslands from southern Canada to northern Mexico, wherever prairie dogs were common (Smithsonian's National Zoo; USFWS). They do not dig their own homes. Instead they move into prairie dog burrows and remodel them, so they need large, connected prairie dog colonies to survive (USFWS). Today every wild population is the result of reintroductions, at sites in states including Wyoming, South Dakota, Montana, Arizona and Colorado, as well as in Canada and Mexico (USFWS; Smithsonian's National Zoo).

Diet & hunting

Prairie dogs are the main prey. In one study they made up about 75% of the diet of adult males and young ferrets, and about two-thirds for adult females, which also ate many mice (Brickner et al. 2014, cited by USFWS). An adult ferret eats roughly one prairie dog every three days, more than 100 a year (Wyoming Game and Fish Department). Ferrets hunt mostly at night and spend most of their time underground, so they are rarely seen. Smell is probably their most important sense for finding prey in dark burrows (Smithsonian's National Zoo; USFWS).

Rediscovery and rescue

Black-footed ferrets were listed as endangered in 1967. The last known wild group, in South Dakota, died out by 1974, and the last ferret in captivity died in 1979, so the species was thought to be extinct (USFWS; Smithsonian's National Zoo). On 26 September 1981, a ranch dog named Shep killed an unfamiliar animal near Meeteetse, Wyoming. His owners, John and Lucille Hogg, took it to a taxidermist, who recognised a black-footed ferret, and biologists then found a surviving colony nearby (Smithsonian's National Zoo; Wyoming Game and Fish Department). When canine distemper and plague swept through that colony, the last 18 ferrets were captured between 1985 and 1987 to start a captive breeding programme (USFWS; Smithsonian's National Zoo).

Zoo breeding and cloning

Only seven of those 18 ferrets left descendants, and all black-footed ferrets alive today, apart from the clones, descend from those seven (USFWS 2024). Breeding started in Wyoming. In 1988 Smithsonian's National Zoo became the first place to breed them outside Wyoming, and the main breeding facilities now include the USFWS National Black-footed Ferret Conservation Center in Colorado, the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, Louisville Zoo, Phoenix Zoo, Cheyenne Mountain Zoo and Toronto Zoo (Smithsonian's National Zoo; USFWS). Reintroductions began in 1991. To add genetic diversity, scientists cloned Willa, a wild-caught ferret whose cells were frozen at San Diego Zoo's Frozen Zoo in 1988. Elizabeth Ann, born on 10 December 2020, was the first cloned US endangered species. A later clone, Antonia, gave birth to two kits at the Smithsonian in 2024, the first clone of the species to have offspring (USFWS; Revive & Restore; Smithsonian's National Zoo).

Fun facts about Black-footed Ferret

• The species was rediscovered in 1981 because a ranch dog named Shep brought a dead ferret home to a Wyoming ranch (Smithsonian's National Zoo).
• An adult black-footed ferret eats about one prairie dog every three days, more than 100 a year (Wyoming Game and Fish Department).
• Elizabeth Ann, born in 2020 from cells frozen in 1988, was the first cloned US endangered species (USFWS).
• Black-footed ferrets do not dig their own burrows; they live in burrows made by prairie dogs (USFWS).

Black-footed Ferret vs Arabian Oryx (zoo comeback comparison)

Both species were lost from the wild and returned by zoo breeding; the ferret's comeback started from fewer animals and also used cloning.

This is a comparison of two conservation comebacks, not a fight. The last wild Arabian oryx was shot in 1972, and zoo-bred herds started from a handful of animals were returned to Oman from 1982 (IUCN). The black-footed ferret came back from just 18 animals caught in Wyoming in 1985-87, of which only seven left descendants (USFWS). On a narrow genetic base the ferret had the harder start, and it is the first US endangered species to be cloned for genetic rescue (USFWS). The oryx has done better since: the IUCN moved it to Vulnerable in 2011, while the ferret is still Endangered.

Read more about Arabian Oryx.

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