#pro exotics

Hyacinth macaw with Pacific parrotlet

I can’t find the source of the photo - I found it through pinterest - but I wanted to show it to show the great diversity of size in the parrot family.

Note that the Pacific parrotlet is nowhere near the smallest parrot - they are actually 3-6 cm longer and twice the weight of the smallest of all, the buff-faced pygmy parrot.

Anti-exotics logic.

Imagine that you are conversing about illnesses with one of your good friends and the subject of disease transmission from pets comes up. Last week, you suffered from a debilitating fever that made you stay home from work.

Your friend informs you that it is possible to contact certain diseases from your pet dog. You acknowledge this risk, but at the same time, it would never enter your mind that you would discontinue keeping your best friend just because it has the small potential to transmit disease. If such a conversation occurred about your beloved pet, how would you feel?

For various reasons, people do not think pet owners are as connected to their lifestyles as are cat and dog owners. In many cases, exotic pet owners are more invested in providing elaborate care for their animals.

With this fact, the bans, judgments, and disrespect that exotic animal owners receive are a double blow. Being lectured by people who could hardly call themselves ‘animal people’ about what pets we should not own, or are allegedly incapable of caring for, will obviously not be welcomed.

I can at least vouch for my perspective; the animals that I choose to care for (current and future) are extremely important to me, and I design my schedules, vacations (or lack thereof), and other common aspects of a person’s life that they do not need to consider and take for granted. Of course, the rewards of such a life are the reasons why many animal owners take on the challenge, and many cannot imagine being denied the right to do so.

Attention keepers of animals of any kind.

From owners of farm animals to dogs, iguanas, sugar gliders, ants, cats, wolf hybrids, pit bulls, eels, wallabies, peacocks, brine shrimp, watusi, Siamese fighting fish, fireflies that you caught at the park during a July 4th fireworks festival and garter snakes. Do you support zoos, educational presentations involving animal displays or class room pets?

The climate of today’s society is rapidly changing. There is a strong disdain overall for the practice and lifestyle choice of captive animal keeping. Even animals that flourish, mentally and physically, in top of the line zoos and aquariums are not safe from the sentiment that animals long to be free and are suffering.

The zoos of the past were certainly something to complain about. It was common for animals to be kept in small, barren cages that were unappealing to the visitors and denied the captive animals of their basic freedoms and overall health. Animals often succumbed to death early, and basic enrichment techniques were not developed.

Today, scientific research has led to literature addressing all aspects of proper animal husbandry, offering captive animals a stimulating environment that meets all of their physical and psychological needs. These principals apply to ALL animals, not just the ‘wild’ ones.

With that being said, animal ownership has devolved from a choice, right, and way of living to an unstable privilege of a few outside of ‘traditional’ pets, being heavily prone to removal if even a single animal owner whom is not representative of the whole, is negligent in their care or actions..

Most pet owners are hard workers, have families, and pay taxes too. There are bad zoos, bad pet owners, bad drivers, bad teachers, bad dog owners, bad doctors, and bad people. But don’t ever let an incident involving an animal occur, because if it does, that means something should be banned; whether it be an ‘exotic’ pet, or ‘bully’ breed type of dog, or reptile. The expectations of certain pet owners are staggeringly high.

Even more important is the fact that as citizens, our choices that make our lives meaningful are not even taken seriously. How else would you describe such quick banning of non-lethal animals with insufficient evidence or facts showing that this group of animals is more harmful than those which are conventional? These animals that very small numbers of people keep are rarely even given the chance to be regulated as they should have been in the first place.

Banning pets is not like banning fireworks. It’s akin to telling a gardener they can no longer grow plants, or informing a dog owner they can only keep cats because some dogs have killed people. Non-pet owners and domesticated pet owners seem to refuse to abide by the philosophy that we should respect people’s differences. Respect doesn’t mean you have to condone something. All pet owners should be able to keep their pet of choice as long as they are not mistreating those them.

There are many reasons why a person may want to keep a non-domesticated animal over a domesticated one (or both). There is no place for judgment on the reason, and only the welfare of the animal and the (possible) impact on the public remain valid concerns.

Once again, I am reposting one of Melissa Smith's articles, because I know of no one who writes better on the topic of exotics. I'm selecting the quotes I find most important, and for the full article, just click the link above. I'm also adding pictures myself, not from the article, to make it more readable. The small texts under the images are also not from the article, but my commentary.

Exotic pet keeping is rapidly becoming a ‘taboo’ in this country, thanks to the persistence of animal rights groups and the unfortunate tendency of many Americans to view animals as precious, innately pure, human-like beings. Wild animals are specifically celebrated as ‘free spirits’ that cannot, and should not be tamed by human greed.

To argue for exotic pets alone would be a debate for the keeping of pets in general, and it wouldn’t make a lot of sense for someone to be forced to take on that philosophical debate solely because they support exotic pet ownership.

Both are wild birds, but one is accepted as a pet, while the other is not.

Hatred of exotic pet keeping thrives from the 'fear of the other' psychology, or fear of something different. Why do people question some pets and not others? When someone sees a pet they are not familiar with there must be a reason keeping it is bad. This is why parrots, which are very demanding pets, get less criticism than a less common exotic, including even other birds like a toucan.

How would one distinguish from the needs of a fox and a hamster? Hamsters can run for miles in the wild, which is something the largest hamster cage cannot replicate. Both species are subjected to unnatural conditions.

Photo by foxsvir

Opponents will try to remove exotic animals from the context of traditional pet owning ethics and elevate their status as something close to human. An example of this is the knee-jerk reaction people have when people 'exploit' (sell,trade, re-home, ect.) exotic animals. This is seen as appalling for exotics, but unobjectionable in the context of dogs, horses, and other traditional pets.

Both are domestic and 100% accepted by the general public, both are frequently lethal to humans.

Exotic pets can never be identified as dangerous as a whole; rather we should define what danger means and which exotic pets are identified in the debate. If danger means lethality, only extremely large exotic pets and venomous animals have killed people in the U.S. This is mostly limited to big cats, bears, wolves, the largest constrictor snakes, venomous snakes, and large ungulates (deer, camels, bison, elephants).

It is only accurate to then state that large or extremely venomous animals are dangerous. In comparison, medium-sized dogs have caused human fatalities, and these deaths are more likely to involve people who are not the owners of the animal (or living with it) or have not voluntarily interacted with it.

Smaller exotic pets are capable of inflicting harm by biting but this is true of any pet that has teeth. All domesticated pets also can inflict injury but this never receives the attention of an exotic pet-related injury, even if it is more severe.

One is an owner of hyenas, the other is an owner of large, powerful dogs. Both are owners of large, dangerous predators, and presumably, both are doing it because they like it - "selfish reasons".

Keeping exotic pets is not anymore "selfish" than keeping domesticated pets. The argument of selfishness suggests that exotic pets are different from traditional pets and this is simply not true.

Accusing an exotic pet owner of being selfish is mostly an empty attack holding them to a higher standard when it is convenient for the accuser. It is a common, emotionally-manipulative, demonization tactic.

"Wild Animals Do Poorly in Captivity"

Animals that do not do well in captivity tend to breed poorly and make bad pets, so they do not last long in the pet trade.

Another variation of this topic is that wild animals have instincts that cannot be satisfied in captivity. All animals have instincts, and no animal, domesticated or otherwise, has truly adapted to living indoors with a human. An example is that indoor cats can suffer health problems and perform stereotypic behaviors which can be corrected using the same methods from the care of so-called wild pets.

Another common argument is that cages are too small and inhibit naturally free-ranging animals from roaming. All pets roam longer distances than enclosures allow.

"Can You Justify Exotic Pets?"

This is a typical argumentative trap that requires a response based on the assumption that keeping exotic pets is inherently wrong. Do not fall for this loaded question. If someone where to say "justify owning dogs" it would be seen by most as a silly question, as literally all of our actions could be seen as negative should we be required to establish them as inherently good in order to be unobjectionable.

I’ve been on this forum for probably 7+ years now, but it’s been very quiet for the last year or so, after a crash where people lost their logins and the address changed.

So here is the link!