The domestic ferret (Mustela putorius furo) have long history of use as an animal model for the study of infectious diseases, human reproductive biology and physiology and non-infectious diseases such as various cancers and cystic fibrosis. Use of ferrets for infectious disease research is facilitated by the complex behaviours they display and their interactions with cage mates and handlers. This aids in in clinical assessment and enables transmission studies. Their size enables repeated and more sophisticated sampling interventions than are achievable with smaller animal models, such as mice or guinea pigs. In comparison to the nonhuman primate models, ferrets are a relatively inexpensive model to source and to house.
At the Australian Animal Health Laboratory, ferrets have been routinely used as an animal model for several different viruses including influenza viruses and the highly pathogenic paramyxoviruses, Hendra and Nipah viruses. Based on this experience working with ferrets at biosafety level 4, we have established ferret models of various filoviruses. Ferrets readily become infected with low doses of virus accompanied by the induction of fulminating disease consistent with that observed in humans and non-human primate infection models. We show that ferrets develop such a disease following exposure to wild-type variants of virus, negating the need for multiple passages to adapt the virus to the model and supporting its biological relevance to clinical scenarios.