Ferrets
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
40 free Ferrets trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Ferrets have lived alongside people for a very long time, first as working hunters sent down burrows and later as some of the most entertaining pets around. They are long, bendy, curious and fond of sleep, and they come with a vocabulary, a history and a rulebook all of their own. This quiz covers the whole animal. Expect questions on how ferrets behave, eat and communicate, on the special words owners use for them, on their wild relatives, including the endangered black-footed ferret of North America, and on the places where keeping one is against the law. There are also questions on ferrets in painting, film, fiction and some very odd corners of sport and science. It is written for ferret owners, animal lovers and quiz fans alike. The early questions are friendly to beginners, and the later ones will test people who already know their hobs from their hoblets.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Renaissance artist painted Lady with an Ermine, a portrait whose animal looks more like an albino ferret?
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci painted the sitter, Cecilia Gallerani, around 1490, and the creature in her arms is too big for a real ermine. Poland bought the picture in 2016 as part of a €100 million deal.
Q 02Which Hogwarts student does Mad-Eye Moody turn into a ferret in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire?
Draco Malfoy
Draco Malfoy is slammed against the ground as a ferret after trying to curse Harry from behind. The teacher punishing him is really Barty Crouch Jr, disguised with Polyjuice Potion.
Q 03Ferret-legging champion Reg Mellor wore trousers of which color, to better show the blood from ferret bites?
White
White trousers were Mellor's own addition to the stunt. In 1981 he set a record of five hours and twenty-six minutes, and said the trick was to feed the animals well beforehand.
Q 04Which burrowing animals make up as much as 90% of the diet of North America's black-footed ferret?
Prairie dogs
Prairie dogs supply the ferret's bedroom as well as its dinner: it hunts them asleep underground at night, then raises its young in their burrows.
Q 05The word 'ferret' traces back to a Latin word with which literal meaning?
Little thief
Little thief is the literal sense. The name grew from fur, the Latin for a thief, which is also thought to lie behind the English word furtive.
Q 06What is the collective noun for a group of ferrets, historically also written with a 'y' in the middle?
A business
A business of ferrets was once spelled 'busyness', which suits animals that are rarely at rest when awake. Rival terms such as 'fesnyng' are almost certainly errors that crept into dictionaries.
Q 07In which Arnold Schwarzenegger film does a pet ferret hidden in a boy's sweater bite the villain?
Kindergarten Cop
Kindergarten Cop makes the ferret a class mascot first and a hero second: its bite on drug lord Cullen Crisp lets the boy he has grabbed break free.
Q 08Elizabeth Ann, a black-footed ferret born in 2020, was created by which technique from cells frozen since the 1980s?
Cloning
Cloning made her the first US endangered species ever copied, using cells from Willa, a ferret that died in the 1980s. A domestic ferret carried the pregnancy so that no rare female was put at risk.
Q 09At Stalag Luft III, the camp of Great Escape fame, guards nicknamed 'ferrets' crawled under the huts looking for what?
Tunnels
Tunnels were the ferrets' quarry, so the prisoners dug three at once and gave each a code name, Tom, Dick and Harry, to keep loose talk from giving them away.
Q 10Ferrets are prized in medical research because they catch and pass on which human illness much as people do?
Influenza
Influenza passes from one ferret to its cage mates, and even to the scientists handling them, much as it moves through a household. Ferrets were used to study the 2009 swine flu virus.
Q 11Which US state joins Hawaii in banning pet ferrets, under a section of its Fish and Game Code?
California
California bans them outright, yet its vets may legally treat the pet ferrets people keep anyway. Most other state bans were repealed in the 1980s and 1990s as the animals grew popular.
Q 12What are young ferrets called, born in litters of three to seven after a six-week pregnancy?
Kits
Kits is the name for ferrets under a year old. They are weaned within three to six weeks and are living independently at three months.
Q 13A male ferret is known as a hob, but which name is traditionally given to a female?
Jill
Jill is the female's name, and breeders keep a separate word, hoblet, for a male that has had a vasectomy.
Q 21The domestic ferret is thought to descend from which wild animal, with which it readily interbreeds?
European polecat
European polecat ancestry shows in the ferret's dark mask, but the two differ in temperament: the wild animal lives alone, while most ferrets are happy in a group.
Q 22Which animals were once classed in the ferret's family until DNA research moved them into a family of their own?
Skunks
Skunks sit in a family of their own, the Mephitidae. Ferrets keep a milder version of the same defence: a startled ferret can release a scent, though it fades quickly.
Q 23Most pet ferrets sold in the United States have had which body parts surgically removed to cut down their smell?
Anal glands
Q 14Which marine member of the ferret's family, the mustelids, has the densest fur of any animal?
Sea otter
Sea otter fur packs up to 150,000 hairs into each square centimetre, because the animal has no blubber and relies on its coat alone to keep out the cold.
Q 15Which powerful relative of the ferret can crush a moose's thigh bone to reach the marrow inside?
Wolverine
Wolverine jaws can break bones as thick as a moose's femur, and the animals have even been seen trying to drive bears away from their kills.
Q 16Ferrets have no cecum and can barely digest plant matter, which makes them what kind of eater?
Obligate carnivores
Obligate carnivores must live on meat. Pet shops once recommended fruit for ferrets, advice that turned out to be bad for their health.
Q 17Which country shipped in ferrets in the 1880s to fight a rabbit plague, then outlawed selling or breeding them in 2002?
New Zealand
New Zealand turned more than a thousand imported ferrets loose on its rabbits. When the rabbits ran short, the hunters switched to native birds that had evolved with no mammal predators at all.
Q 18Which conqueror is recorded as using ferrets in a gigantic hunt in 1221 that aimed to purge a region of animals?
Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan was following an old habit: the Romans probably hunted with ferrets too, and the animals reached the Americas with settlers in the 17th century.
Q 19Which New York City mayor vetoed a bill to legalize pet ferrets, likening it to legalizing tigers?
Rudy Giuliani
Rudy Giuliani sent council members a memo of talking points against ferrets, and clashed on air with a ferret campaigner who phoned his weekly radio show.
Q 20An excited ferret's 'weasel war dance' of frenzied sideways hops and leaps is a signal of what?
An invitation to play
An invitation to play is all the dance means, however fierce it looks. Ferrets are notoriously clumsy dancers and often crash into the furniture in the middle of a leap.
Anal glands are taken out in a procedure called descenting. In Britain and on the Continent it is widely regarded as an unnecessary mutilation.
Q 24Pet ferrets 'imprint' on which part of their lives by about six months old, often refusing later changes to it?
Their food
Their food preferences set so firmly that a ferret raised on one brand of kibble may refuse another, so owners are advised to offer youngsters many flavours early.
Q 25What do owners call the soft clucking noise an excited ferret makes during its 'weasel war dance'?
Dooking
Dooking is a happy sound. A frightened ferret hisses instead, and an upset one gives a soft squeak.
Q 26Ferrets with 'blaze' or 'panda' coat patterns are especially prone to which inherited condition?
Deafness
Deafness affects as many as 75 percent of ferrets with these head markings. The same defect broadens the skull in the womb, and it resembles Waardenburg syndrome in humans.
Q 27Insulinoma, a common cancer of pet ferrets, grows in the islet cells of which organ?
Pancreas
Pancreas tumours of this kind usually strike ferrets aged four or five. Adrenal disease and lymphoma are the other great health worries of ferret owners.
Q 28Which canine disease devastated the last known wild colony of black-footed ferrets in 1985?
Distemper
Distemper is deadly to the species: even a live vaccine made for domestic ferrets killed large numbers of them. Biologists caught the 18 survivors to start a breeding programme.
Q 29The black-footed ferret was declared extinct in 1979, until a wild group turned up near Meeteetse in which US state?
Wyoming
Wyoming's colony grew to about 130 animals before disease cut it to 18. Nearly every black-footed ferret alive descends from just seven of those survivors.
Q 30Ferret-legging, the stunt of trapping ferrets in one's trousers, was once popular among which Yorkshire workers?
Coal miners
Coal miners made a contest of it in the 1970s. One theory traces the stunt to poachers, who hid their illegal hunting ferrets down their trousers when gamekeepers came by.