Although New York City voted to keep its 16-year ban on ferrets, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani stuck up for the tiny animals during an interview with NY1. 

"I still love animals ... any animals," Giuliani told NY1, adding that he would be "OK with legalizing ferrets if the Board of Health and research supported it."  

Ferrets have been banned for 16 years and the band was once supported by Giuliani when he was mayor. Back in 1999, Giuliani famously told a man who called in on his weekly show that he was "deranged" for advocating for ferrets. 

"There's something deranged about you," Giuliani said to the caller. "The excessive concern that you have for ferrets is something you should examine with a therapist. Not with me." 

It appeared that Giuliani had a change of heart in his interview with NY1, so there may still be hope that other politicians will change their views on the matter one day, too.

There weren't enough votes to legalize keeping ferrets as pets in New York City because of fears of them being too "vicious" or emitting "too much odors," Mayor Bill de Blasio, who usually supports animal rights, told NY1.

This doesn't mean advocates are going to stop trying to make more people change their minds like Giuliani. 

"I don't think I've ever been let down by my government this much," Ariel Jasper of Brooklyn, who petitioned the city last year to overturn the ban, told NY1.