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
Saharan striped polecat and above a black snout. It is sometimes confused with the striped polecat though it is generally smaller and has distinct facial markings. The Saharan stripe polecat is distributed around the northern and southern edges of the Sahara Mauretania, Western Sahara and Morocco in the west along the Mediterranean littoral of North Africa to the Nile Valley in Egypt, while in the south its range is the Sahel east to Sudan and Djibouti. The Saharan stripe polecat is found on the margins of deserts especially in mountains, in arid stony terrain and sandy semideserts, rarely seen in woodlands and is