The Misunderstood Mink
The most common misconception about mink is spread by mink farmers and naturalists who know a lot about mink, but don’t know how or have never tried to tame a mink. They claim that mink are vicious, untamable creatures. Highly aggressive? Yes. Untamable? FAR FROM IT! I have tamed male mink, female mink, old mink, young mink, black, brown and gray mink, mink from fur farms, and mink from the wild. To give you an example of how completely mink can be tamed, let me use the two mink I have right now as examples. I have two female ranch mink, both of which were captured or bought as adults, and both of which I handle without gloves. Not only that, I even feed them raw meat out of my bare hands without worrying about being bitten. They will literally lick the blood off of my fingers without hurting me. I let them ride on my shoulder, climb under my shirt or coat, I can grab them by the tail to catch them if they try to run somewhere I don’t want them to, and I even let carefully supervised children and strangers hold these mink without mishap.
The misconception on the opposite side of the spectrum comes from people who know little to nothing about mink, and wild animals in general. Many of these people have had pet ferrets and ignorantly assume that all long skinny mustelids must be “just like ferrets”. I literally want to puke every time I hear that! “They’re just like ferrets!” :chair: Every person who knows nothing about wild animals says that whenever they see a mink and it drives me nuts! NO MINK ARE NOT LIKE FERRETS!!! And neither are ANY of the wild mustelids, including their wild ancestor the polecat! Ferrets are DOMESTIC. Mink, otters, weasels, martens, polecats, and every other mustelid species out there are WILD ANIMALS. Saying a mink is just like a ferret is much like saying a house cat is just like a bob cat, or a wolf is just like a dog. For those who haven’t learned this yet THERE IS A HUGE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WILD AND DOMESIC ANIMALS!!!
Some mink are hard to tame, some seem to tame themselves. Each mink is an individual, and like Forest Gump’s Mama always said about life and boxes of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get. Just about everything I say about mink has an exception somewhere out there. I guarantee you that somewhere there is a mink that is impossible to tame. I also guarantee you that there are mink out there that are born tamer and sweeter than any ferret alive. Each mink has its own VERY DESTINCT personality. I had a ranch mink I named Murray that was afraid of water and hated getting wet. This same mink had no fear of me from the first day I found her wandering around in a hay field, and never bit me once despite the fact that I found her as an older adult. Murray was also about as dumb as a ferret (no offence ferret people, but compared to mink, ferrets are not very smart). On the other extreme I had another ranch mink that was also acquired as an escaped adult, but she was totally OBSESSED with swimming! She literally swam all day long! She also was very fearful of humans and bit like crazy, sinking her long canines right through my double layered welding gloves! So each mink you get will be different, regardless of their age or background.