European polecat populations. Compared to other British carnivores, such as otters and badgers, the polecat has received little exposure in popular media. A study conducted on rural school children showed only 3.8% of the surveyed children could identify polecats in photographs, whereas 83.7% correctly identified otters. A caged polecat appears as a key character of Saki's short story "Sredni Vashtar". European polecat The European polecat ("Mustela putorius") – also known as the common ferret, black or forest polecat, or fitch (as well as some other names) – is a species of mustelid native to western Eurasia and north Morocco. It is of
European polecat a relatively late period. The oldest modern polecat fossils occur in Germany, Britain and France, and date back to the Middle Pleistocene. The European polecat's closest relatives are the steppe polecat and black-footed ferret, with which it is thought to have shared "Mustela stromeri" as a common ancestor. The European polecat is, however, not as maximally adapted in the direction of carnivory as the steppe polecat, being less specialised in skull structure and dentition. The European polecat likely diverged from the steppe polecat 1.5 million years ago based on IRBP, though cytochrome b transversions indicate a younger date of 430,000