Dechmann suspects she knows why this animal, in particular, has achieved what was thought to be unlikely. American mink belong to a family of small mammals with a remarkable ability to seasonally change their brain size in a process known as Dehnel’s phenomenon. Dechmann, an expert on this process, has documented Dehnel’s in shrews, moles, and weasels.
American mink regrow their brains in a rare reversal of the domestication process
A rather bizarre discovery but a glad one for the mink.
When I was a kid I used to visit my uncle’s mink farm. I was fascinated by the mink but even then I could tell how obscene it was to have them crammed in a cage a little bigger than them.
One of the most interesting things about mink I have seen are these videos by a guy in Utah that takes ranch mink and trains them to hunt muskrats, rats, etc. The video is of one of his stand outs. He has 336 million views on his channel.
Mink suffered from Covid and many mink ranches were destroyed. American Mink are invasive in Europe etc.