So if you keep an animal outside with lots of land it's okay just don't call it a pet?

Let's see tigers, lions, lemurs, bush babies, etc. all bred in captivity over many generations and not imported for pets into the USA. They are born and bred at USDA license facilities where their parents were born. You're talking black market which there is no need for when there is legal breeding and trade allowed. Why would anyone want a wild animal when they can get a legal and tamed baby that was born in captivity with a known history and health measures taken? Who would kill their breeding animals just to sell the babies? You're not talking USA here you're talking black market trade in other countries.

Yeah, in that case anything not a dog or a cat or livestock.

But if you're trying to draw a legal line that exotics should be banned, is that where you want to draw it?

I don't think there's any need to put words into my mouth. My point (in case you missed it) was that "low level" exotics, like guinea pigs and rabbits, are already commonly neglected to the point of death due to ignorance on the parts of owners. These are animals that have veterinary care widely available, have a variety of researched, prepackaged diets on the market, and have a dearth of husbandry information available. Making animals with much less information, available vet care, and available dietary resources available as pets is tricky at best. And simply saying that there aren't many reported cases of abuse as your defense is spurious at best considering that most animal control officers know so little about even common exotics (like guinea pigs and rabbits) that it's almost impossible to get any sort of charges pressed.

Horses have been domesticated for hundrets of years. You really can't compare that to a lion.

And I know for a FACT that wild animals get into the US.

wild animals get to every country that can pay money for one. So does drugs.

There are restrictions to animals owned in the usa as well as other countries. You may not be able to compare a horse to a lion, but also i don't know any with pet lions either. You can't just go to the local swap meet and buy a lion.

I don't think any one disagrees that it should be difficult to get a dangerous animal that can and likely wood do serious damage to the people or other animals.

There are a few in the us that own camels, which are one of the oldest semi domesticated animal. They are huge, can cause damage, but can also be well taken care of and used to work for them in the usa.

i am all for education, and permits, licensing and so forth, but not banning all exotics.

Was more of a question exactly where you want the line drawn. So anything that isn't common?

It's not that difficult to find information on keeping any species now with the internet and can take a good bit of research to find one to buy they also cost more than pet store "exotics". Which is more likely to get neglected a free or cheap dog from the paper or picked up at a flea market or one where the person had to research the breeder and pay hundreds to thousands for a pure bred?

Horses are huge and spoke easily and kill lots of people every year. Lions are one of the easiest big cats to keep, especially males. They are happy to just lay around most of the time. Just because people have kept horses for a long time doesn't make them any safer and feeding a lion isn't rocket science.

Some wild animals do get traded in legally but black market is extremely rare and is usually a case of one stupid person thinking they can bring a pet home from a vacation. You said

So you claim these animals are coming into the USA from the wild from pets for "fact" please provide some cases. I've not hear of any.

I don't know where you get your figures, but if that were true, then there are far more lions, tiger, pumas, etc out there than anyone would believe.I've seen plenty of exotics that were abused and neglected. That includes dozens of big cats. I know three big cat rescues that have taken in ten abused animals this year in just two midwestern states. That would mean there are ten thousand out there that are doing fine. I don't think so...

And BTW, I don't consider a grossly obese cat living in a 10'X30' cage as being "fine". That's not a pet, that's a living trophy for your ego. What about quality of life? If you account for that, I think you'd find that only about .001% of exotics are well cared for.

I agree that there are some people who can handle and take care of almost any exotic. The best folks are very professional in their care. The other side of that coin is that for every one good owner of a large (dangerous) exotic, there are probably ten or fifteen idiots who are keeping the animals in poor conditions. The worst keepers are always the ones that consider the animals "pets".

By letting anybody keep these animals, we end up letting everyone have a chance to own anything. For the safety of the animals and people, some animals should not be kept by individuals.

For instance, there was the wolf-hybrid that carried off the three day old infant. Who's fault was this? The wolf for being a predator, or the owner for being an idiot?

Or take the recent account of a cable worker getting bit by a Green Mamba in Florida. All the permitted Mambas were accounted for, so it's likely that it escaped from someone not following the law. Florida has some of the stiffest laws concerning venomous reptiles, and yet, people still break the law!

It just goes to show that no matter how you try to regulate exotics, people will always do what they want. This snake had come from somewhere, most likely a breeder. That means it probably changed hands somehow. Just because it may have been legal at one time, doesn't change the fact that it ended up biting an innocent bystander. The last person to own it, ...shouldn't have. There is just no place outside of a good institution for many animals, whether they be a Tiger or a Mamba or a wolf-hybrid.

And as far as:You have absolutely NO clue as to what you are talking about. The illegal wildlife trade totals Billions of dollars each year. Some estimates put it as the second leading cause of animal endangerment, right after habitat destruction. The illegal harvesting and smuggling of exotic animals for the pet trade is a major problem everywhere in the world. It's especially bad here in the Good Ole U S of A.

We, in the US, are the biggest consumers of these animals as pets. (Asian markets tend to use them as food or medicine, and Europe has some very strict laws regarding pet ownership). A major reason we have homes for all of these exotics is because of the confusing patchwork of laws and enforcement.

Some people who advocate exotic ownership are really just advocating selfishness. They don't care about all the animals that suffered or died to bring that animal to the person they bought it from. They don't care about all the animals abused by ignorant or ill-informed owners. They don't want these animals because it's good for the animals or the species. They just want the ego boost from owning something cool. These are the majority, and these are the people I have a problem with.

Bob

For me it depends on what the exotic is. I am all for regulations, permits, captive breeding and so on.

People can care for exotic frogs for example. I don't think people should have pet alligators, people can care for bunnies (many buy them then abandon them, but that shouldn't mean no one can have them. people just need to stop buying the cute fuzzies for little kids)

Actually, it can be quite difficult to find information on exotics. Not hobbyist websites (Oh, hay, I like coatimundis! type sites), but legitimate information about care, researched and proven by something besides the local tiger breeder.

For example, someone here has a fox. Looking up "pet fox" brings up one page about keeping foxes as pets. The information is vague. The caresheet is a couple of pages long. I can't tell people how to take care of a cat for 15 years in 2 pages, surely you can't tell me how to take care of a FOX for 15 years in the same?

You give people WAY too much credit. Yes, there is lots of information available. There is also TONS if incorrect information out there, if people even bother to look. Yes, it really shouldn't be that hard to care for a lot of these animals. People don't bother to do research and make necessary preparations for a pet. I have a coworker who believed that peanut butter would kill her dog. She paid almost $1000 for a yorkie and he is the most poorly bred dog I have ever seen. People have NO IDEA, seriously.

Actually 10,000 is the average number I have seen quoted most places for an estimate of tigers in the USA. Out of 304 million people that doesn't seem to drastic, considering some also own more than one.



Yeah regular dogs never kill any body.

so better to ban anyone having them since people will ignore the law anyway and the individuals who did have one legaly did nothing wrong.



For the whole world and includes body parts which is the majority of the trade. Please find me one case of a tiger cub brought into the USA for a pet legal or otherwise in any recent time period since regulation (cites) was implemented.

Why is a tiger or any exotic more worthy of being protected from abuse than a dog or any more common animal? Why are they so special that they should be banned from private ownership just to protect them?

The sanctuary that had tiger cubs in the fridge and was busted for neglect must have been calling them pets, even though it is illegal under the permitting system to say they are pets in that state. I suppose the drown primates and other atrocities that happened at PPI, was an individual pet owner and not really a primate rescue that was mismanaged.

Wonder why most zoos still choose to feed anteaters a kibble based diet that can lead to spinal lesions due to vitaminosis and many owners I know are choosing a diet designed to more closely meet their needs based on a wild diet?

http://www.raskbb.com/sybilsden/viewforum.php?f=6

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/FennecFox/

http://sybilsden.com/caresheet/fox.htm

http://www.juliesjungle.com/fennecfox.php

http://www.ehow.com/how_2046502_care-pet-fox.html

http://creaturesgreatnsmall.com/aboutus.aspx

Oh, right has to be info from a scientific study and not a breeder or fellow pet owner no matter their experience. Do you only get all your pet info from scientific papers and not other owners too?

What's so hard about caring for a cat that it needs that much. You just need to cover the basics, give it cat food, see a vet once a year, vaccines, water, a litter box. See a vet or talk to other owners if you run into an issue later, like fleas or illness or behavior issues. A care sheet covers the basics not the whole life of an animal and ever scenario you might ever face. Not everyone will agree on exactly what to feed, of course not everyone does on cats either, long as the diet isn't detrimentally off it's not really bad info just not all keepers agree.

And didn't take any time to find that info, was just busy with Pua.

Actually, I get the majority of it from sources that back it with scientific references, generally veterinary references. I need to know the reason that I'm doing things for my animal. Not just "Bob the guy with 15 litters" does this.

Of those references, most are for fennec foxes, not red foxes (the species I was talking about) and one is a messageboard.

Most of your points are hypothetical and anecdotal at best. You put a positive spin on it because there are a lot of people out there trying to make things better. That doesn't just erase all of the abuse/neglect that does occur. Your statements about zoos and sanctuaries actually undermine your argument; if supposed experts cannot care for these animals, how can we expect individual owners to do so?

I am not necessarily in favor of banning all exotics, but I wish there were a way to effectively regulate their possession and care. Yes, I would deprive responsible people of pets in exchange for saving thousands of animals from suffering in the hands of irresponsible owners.

This is the only valid point you've made so far. I wish there were a way to regulate dog and cat ownership too.

That's like saying we don't need speed limits because there are a lot of people who would drive responsibly without them.