Research with model organisms is often lauded for its putative ability to integrate knowledge at the molecular, physiological, and organismic levels, and across the tree of life. I’ll explore this prima facie surprising assertion (why would working on a single organism better enable us to integrate across multiple levels and multiple organisms?), and then introduce a case study describing the use of ferrets in research in virology. Ferrets, which can be understood as a kind of “model organism in development,” clearly exhibit the different ways that scientists both work to enhance and improve the integrative promise of their work over time and deploy arguments that this integrative promise merits the support of the broader scientific community. I’ll both describe the current state of play in such research and discuss the calls for further enhancement and refinement of the ferret model in order to make the case.