Editing Ferret (section)

==Terminology and coloring==
<!-- [[Sable (disambiguation)]] links here. Please update it if the section title is changed. -->
[[Image:XenoFerret.jpg|thumb|Typical ferret coloration, known as a sable or polecat-colored ferret]]

Most ferrets are either albinos, with white fur and pink eyes, or display the typical dark masked sable coloration of their wild polecat ancestors. In recent years fancy breeders have produced a wide variety of colors and patterns. Color refers to the color of the ferret's guard hairs, undercoat, eyes and nose; pattern refers to the concentration and distribution of color on the body, mask and nose, as well as white markings on the head or feet when present. Some national organizations, such as the American Ferret Association, have attempted to classify these variations in their showing standards.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ferret.org/events/colors/colorchart.html |title=American Ferret Association: Ferret Color and Pattern Standards |publisher=Ferret.org |access-date=2008-11-30 |archive-date=2008-12-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081209073612/http://www.ferret.org/events/colors/colorchart.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

There are four basic colors. The sable (including chocolate and dark brown), albino, dark-eyed white (DEW, also known as black-eyed white or BEW) and silver. All the other colors of a ferret are variations on one of these four categories.

===Waardenburg-like coloring===
[[Image:Coco 4056.JPG|right|thumb|White or albino ferret]]

Ferrets with a white stripe on their face or a fully white head, primarily blazes, badgers and pandas, almost certainly carry a congenital defect which shares some similarities to [[Waardenburg syndrome]]. This causes, among other things, a cranial deformation in the womb which broadens the skull, white face markings, and also partial or total deafness. It is estimated as many as 75&nbsp;percent of ferrets with these Waardenburg-like colorings are deaf.

White ferrets were favored in the [[Middle Ages]] for the ease in seeing them in thick undergrowth. [[Leonardo da Vinci]]'s painting ''[[Lady with an Ermine]]'' is likely mislabelled; the animal is probably a ferret, not a [[stoat]] (for which "ermine" is an alternative name for the animal in its white winter coat). Similarly, the ermine portrait of Queen [[Elizabeth I]] shows her with her pet ferret, which has been decorated with painted-on [[Heraldry|heraldic]] ermine spots.

''The Ferreter's Tapestry'' is a 15th-century tapestry from [[Burgundy]], France, now part of the Burrell Collection housed in the Glasgow Museum and Art Galleries. It shows a group of peasants hunting rabbits with nets and white ferrets. This image was reproduced in ''Renaissance Dress in Italy 1400–1500'', by Jacqueline Herald, Bell & Hyman.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Herald |first=Jacqueline |year=1981 |title=Renaissance Dress in Italy 1400–1500 |series=History of Dress 2 |location=London |publisher=Bell & Hyman |isbn=0-391-02362-4 |oclc=925257752}}</ref>

''Gaston Phoebus' Book of the Hunt'' was written in approximately 1389 to explain how to hunt different kinds of animals, including how to use ferrets to hunt rabbits. Illustrations show how multicolored ferrets that were fitted with muzzles were used to chase rabbits out of their warrens and into waiting nets.