Ah, the things I think about when I’m delivering papers at 4:00. Seeing all the cute little critters–squirrels, possums, and such–it occurred to me that they tend to be pretty much cut from the same mold. No tiger-stripey squirrels. No dalmation-spotted racoons.
What do you think? If these guys were as colorful as our pet dogs and cats and birds, would we have found a way to make housepets of them?
Boy. I sure would like to have a skunk for a pet. They’re adorable.
Well, I guess at least they wouldn’t get stuck up trees and have to be rescued!
Some people have domesticated skunks, but it’s a risky proposition. You can train them to not spray in response to any normal daily stimulus, but if something spooks them then you’re in trouble. A teacher once told me a story of one woman who trained a skunk like that. One day she was driving it to the vet (!) and hand a fender bender. The skunk was tossed to the front of the car, and some instinct made it spray. She had to junk the car, as there just wasn’t any way to get the smell out.
On a more relevant note, cats and dogs were much less varied in their coat patterns before humans started breeding them for purely asthetic reasons. I imagine that at the dawn of human civilization both species were kept mainly for purposes of vermin control, and only later moved into their role as pets.
I don’t believe dogs and cats came in a variety of colors before they were domesticated. That’s something that came along later.
Color varieties are the results of mutations which may occur in the wild but do not usually survive in the wild. For example, those cute little budgerigars that come in all sorts of colors as pets are naturally green in the wild. If the non-green budgies were allowed to breed willy nilly they would eventually revert back to the wild green color after a few generations.
However if we did have calico, orange tabby and white squirrels running around in the wild I’m sure some people would not be able to resist having them as pets. Ooh, how about a blue point himalayan squirrel? That would be too cute!
There are white squirrels, and black ones as well. They must be some kind of mutation, but I have seen plenty of the black ones.
Also, the ones I saw in Toronto were very dark bodied, but had orangish tails, I don’t know what those are.
For hundreds/thousands of years there was nothing stopping people from catching and keeping anything they wanted as pets. The most suitable ones are today the most popular/common ones. I don’t think a squirrel would do very well. To cage it in any size of cage a regular person would have in their house would be very restrictive and overall sad for the squirrel. To let it roam around the house, well, that would be like having a very agile and fearless rat roaming through your cupboards and chewing through your furniture. Colouring has nothing to do with it.
Oh yes, 50 years ago in the country my mom DID have a pet skunk - “unfixed” yet. They can be good pets… if you live in the country and be nice to them. Try carrying a skunk around town and having dogs/kids/ignorant people sniffing/poking/shreiking at the sight and Mr.Stinker would probably live up to his name too often.
As a boy I had a red squirrel as a pet—such as it was. He was affectionate when it suited him, but he bit hard and often. I finally released him and never saw him again. I also had a flying squirrel, at a different time. That was a very sweet animal and ranked as my all time favorite pet until Ferry the Ferret came along.
That’s the other way around. Had we domesticated these “guys” they would now come in all sort of colors and furs.
Dogs and cats didn’t originally have fluffy furs, weird shapes or varied colors. We breeded them to look that way. If I’m not mistaken, domesticated dogs returning to wild life and breeding freely eventually end up with a rather uniform brownish-orange color after some generations, for instance.
That would be true if the genetic makeup of the group of dogs released into the wild was a good cross-section of the entire species. If you released a pack of dalmations and they never crossbred with any other wild dog pack, they would stay dalmations. Or they might die.
Regarding the OP, a possum is not a “cute little critter”. If you think it is, you need to have more coffee before you hit your paper route.
Carry on.
I agree Wile E. Although I am not an expert, I do remember seeing a documentary on TV that talked about an experiment in Russia to make Foxes more Docile. The scientists only allowed the most docile foxes to breed and in a very few generations they had foxes with floppy ears and spots. I think that the variety comes from domestication, not the other way around. Of course, keep in mind my first statement, I am not an expert.
Cats are domesticated?
John Singer Sargent or Copley or one of those guys painted a cute portrait of a early 19th-century boy with a pet squirrel, smaller than the gray ones and sort of reddish in color, with a little chain leash. So it’s been done.
I don’t suppose they’re particularly bright, though, and may be too destructive to keep in a home; they’re rodents with a strong gnawing instinct, after all, and unlike other rodents kind of big and strong to keep in cages.
They are quite adept at teaching their providers. Kitties are way too smart. 
Because of NZ’s envriomental issues we have very limited options when it comes to pets. No gerbils, hamsters, snakes (snakes are not even allowed in zoos), exotic reptiles, primates etc etc for us. Rabbits were illegal to keep as pets until the 80’s.
I don’t think this is a bad thing for NZ but if I lived in a squirrel place I would love to have one as a pet. They are so cute, almost as cute as racoons…I so want one of them. If you hand raised one could they be a pet?
I know someone who hand-reared a wild grey squirrel (which is a very successful invader to this country, rather than a native) - it was as tame as would be any rodent, but very much more active - it would climb up and down her body almost continually and it had needle-sharp claws, which you can’t really do anything about - if you trim them, the animal cannot express its climbing behaviour safely.
I loved feeding squirrels in Britain. They would have liked me less if they knew I was planning how to stuff one in my backpack.
Weren’t you on Scrubs a few weeks ago?
Ava
Depends. Did I catch one?
Possibly a Halloween squirrel?