This little ferret alerts his owner when he’s about to have a silent seizure:

Do you believe that a ferret is an unusual service animal? What about a boa or a Macaque monkey? More from the Seattle Times Newspaper:

The public long has become accustomed to guide dogs for the blind, first used in 1929. But when the use of dogs for other types of help for the disabled — such as alerting deaf people to sounds, pulling wheelchairs and helping with mobility issues — became common after enactment of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, controversy over access came with it.

The controversy intensified as other species entered the service-animal ring, and as “emotional-support animals,” those designated to help someone suffering from some form of mental illness, have become common.

Courts and human-rights commissions from East Coast to West Coast have dealt with access complaints pertaining to a service iguana, ferrets, a duck, goats and miniature horses, to name a few. The species are so varied that the Department of Transportation (DOT) mentioned some by name: spiders, for example, in regulations banning them from flying in aircraft cabins.

That the DOT mentioned spiders by name “means somewhere along the line, somebody brought … a service spider on the aircraft,” wrote Candy Harrington, editor of Emerging Horizons, a magazine for disabled travelers, in her blog. “I have to say in all honesty, that if the person seated next to me whipped out a service spider, I would be teaching that arachnid to play dead … faster than the airlines can raise their excess-baggage charges.”

However, “I know a lot of people with service animals, and they really do provide a service. In most cases they allow folks to be more independent. But when you throw in the unusual or exotic service animals, that tends to discredit folks with standard service animals. They have a hard enough time gaining access to public accommodations, and it’s even harder when business owners read about the unusual service animals,” Harrington said. Ginger Luke owns the Rickshaw Restaurant in North Seattle and founded Ginger’s Pet Rescue, which places abandoned dogs, including some who become service animals. She’s skeptical about nontraditional service animals.

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