Scientists have long posited that domesticated animal species have evolved more sophisticated socio-cognitive skills than their wild relatives. This allows for rudimentary communication with humans. Domesticated canines, for example, seek eye contact with their human partners when facing a difficult task, as if they're looking for guidance.

One domesticated species whose socio-cognitive abilities have not been studied is the ferret. Domesticated as many as 2,500 years ago, ferrets were commonly used to chase rodents out of their burrows, a process called ferreting. Today, they are more regularly kept as household pets.

To gauge ferrets' socio-cognitive skills, Hungarian researchers compared dogs, domestic ferrets, and wild ferrets in three different tests.

In the first test, researchers examined whether the animals were more tolerant of direct eye contact with a stranger or their owner. Experimenters and owners held the animal subjects in their hands and tried to maintain eye contact for as long as possible during a 30-second period. Both domestic ferrets and dogs held eye contact with their owners significantly longer than with strangers, while wild ferrets showed no preference.

The second experiment was a two-way choice task in which a stranger and an owner both offered food to the animal subject and the animal chose which to take the food from. Both domestic ferrets and dogs chose to accept food from their owner significantly more than chance, while wild ferrets seemed to show a slight preference for taking food from the stranger (see above graph).

The animals' ability to follow human directional gestures was studied in the final experiment. Two containers, each holding a piece of food, were laid out a set distance from the animal. As part of the experiment, the animal subject's owner would gesture to one of the containers. The researchers analyzed two different types of gestures: a sustained touch, where the owner was grabbing one container during each trial, and a momentary touch, where the owner would point to one of the containers before the trial began. Once again, both dogs and ferrets preferred to eat the food from the container gestured to by their owner, while the wild ferrets did not.

The research was limited in that it was performed with a small number of animal subjects. But according to the researchers, the study provides further evidence that domestication involves genetic changes leading to enhanced socio-cognitive abilities. What's more, it showed that ferrets were strikingly similar to dogs in the tested social-behavioral characteristics. In ferrets, dogs may have a dark horse competitor for the title of "Man's Best Friend."

Source: Hernádi A, Kis A, Turcsán B, Topál J (2012) Man’s Underground Best Friend: Domestic Ferrets, Unlike the Wild Forms, Show Evidence of Dog-Like Social-Cognitive Skills. PLoS ONE 7(8): e43267. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0043267