Meet Aster, Swifty and Aspen.

       The trio of black-footed ferret kits at the Smithsonian National Zoo’s biology facility in Virginia were named after more than 6,700 people voted.

       Support our journalism. Subscribe today. arrow-right

       The baby ferrets were born May 19 at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) in Front Royal. Experts at the facility breed and study more than 20 species — many of which were at one point extinct in the wild, including the black-footed ferret.

       The kits’ names were picked from a preselected list that represented the “ferrets’ significance as a distinctly North American species,” officials said in a statement. The names were announced Tuesday after five days of voting on nine names.

       Story continues below advertisement

       The female kit was named Aster, the name of a purple flower that is native to the prairie of the United States. Her name was selected in a public vote on the National Zoo’s website.

       Advertisement

       One of her brothers was named Swifty, which is meant to represent the swift fox and was picked in an e-newsletter poll by members of the National Zoo. {The other male kit was named Aspen, a name short for “quaking aspen” — another plant found in the prairie areas of the country. His name was chosen by players of the zoo’s mobile game called Zoo Guardians.

       The kits, as baby ferrets are called, were born to third-time mother Potpie. She is 3 years old, and the father, Daly, is 1.

       Story continues below advertisement

       The birth of the animals is special because this September marks the 40th anniversary of the “discovery of a small population of black-footed ferrets, whom we thought were extinct at that time,” Will Pitt, SCBI deputy director, said in a statement.

       Experts said black-footed ferrets were once found in the wild in the Western plains and were thought to be extinct until 1981, when a small colony of 18 black-footed ferrets was found near Meeteetse, Wyo. That group was taken into human care by federal wildlife experts to make sure the species did not go extinct, according to zoo experts.

       Advertisement

       In 1988, the SCBI was the first group to receive offspring from that colony and breed them outside Wyoming. In the past few decades, the zoo said, more than 1,000 black-footed ferrets have been born at the SCBI. More than 350 kits born at the institute have gone into a program to get them ready for release into the wild, according to officials.

       Story continues below advertisement

       When the latest set of ferrets at the zoo’s Virginia facility are about 4 months old, they will be separated from their mother. Then, officials will evaluate them as part of a larger program that oversees black-footed ferrets in human care to determine if they should stay at the zoo’s facility, be transferred to another breeding facility in the United States or eventually be released into the wild.