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I have come across a lot of debates over this, and was wondering what the community as a whole thought of this? Feel free to leave an opinion untainted by mine, of course.
As far as my take on it - if you have the provisions and means to care for an exotic animal, and as long as you are not treating them like house pets, I have no qualms with it. Keeping a tiger in your apartment is another story of course. What I don't understand is there are (as in many things) mostly only one extreme or the other. Either someone is advocating wild animal purchase, or they're trying to ban it all together.
What brought this about was browsing amazon to look at cheetah books. I came across a lot of statements about a particular book where the family had a "pet" cheetah (which, they lived in africa, and the cheetah came and went as it pleased). People seemed down right hostile or flustered over it - which is funny, because, at one point the cheetah was near to being domesticated. They were used to hunt and as pets by pharaohs and the like. If they had not been so hard to breed in captivity ( Akbar the Great had over 9,000 cheetahs), we would have had pet cheetahs today. Cheetahs still exhibit a lot of the more domestic traits, more so than any other wild cat.
Another issue are wolves and wolf-hybrids. For some reason, people seem to think the opposite about wolves. They look so much like dogs that they must be the same, right?
Dogs are actually wolves that never reach maturity. In a wolf pack, the cubs act childish and playful like domestic dogs to keep them in social order - when they reach maturity, they loose this 'eager-to-please' demeanor, and become actual adult wolves. It is very dangerous to be near wolves in an enclosure when you are sick or exhibit weakness. Probably almost as dangerous as being in a cage with a wild tiger.
Another interesting thing on tame animals:
A domestication experiment was done on foxes in russia in mass. Selectively breeding the ones that were most tame, a strange thing started happening - the foxes began to change colours, get spots, floppy ears and to "bark" and whimper for attention like dogs. These foxes had a viable domesticated population in under 40 years.
http://reactor-core.org/taming-foxes.ht
Semi-exotic wild cats:
Mostly cats, these are a new trend in breeding. Domestic cats are interbred with wild cats, such as the serval to create new breed independent of either. Such as the "bengal" (which are hardly part wild anymore) and Savannah:
BigCatRescue (which I really deplore for their stance that "if a species has to live in a cage it shouldn't live at all" and thus snipping any animal they come in contact with including endangered ones - support snowleopardtrust! yay!) claims that some of these cats are "wild" and can't live on normal house cat diets. First of all, the savannah and the safari are on their way to domestication, of course they are going to be wild to begin with. Second - well, duh. NO pet should be surviving on the horrible diet people tout to them. Corn as a main ingredient? COME ON. XD Most of these cats, as well as domestic dogs and cats are allergic to gluten and should be fed meat-based diets.
Also, you can tell how much wild blood these cats will have by looking at their generational chart. "F1" means first cross, "F2" is second generation and so on.
Savannah: Tall lanky cat - serval/domestic. Very active cat, loves to jump, walks on a leash, and likes water.
Safari: Geoffroy's Cat/Domestic is much smaller than the serval cross, but still large. It loves water and is usually more affectionate than a savannah.
Bengal: By far the most domestic of the three. They come in brown-spotted, marble, snow, and silver. Asian Leopard Cat x domestic:
(most) Photos courtesy of:
http://www.bengal-cat.net/
http://www.savannahcatbreed.com/
As far as my take on it - if you have the provisions and means to care for an exotic animal, and as long as you are not treating them like house pets, I have no qualms with it. Keeping a tiger in your apartment is another story of course. What I don't understand is there are (as in many things) mostly only one extreme or the other. Either someone is advocating wild animal purchase, or they're trying to ban it all together.
What brought this about was browsing amazon to look at cheetah books. I came across a lot of statements about a particular book where the family had a "pet" cheetah (which, they lived in africa, and the cheetah came and went as it pleased). People seemed down right hostile or flustered over it - which is funny, because, at one point the cheetah was near to being domesticated. They were used to hunt and as pets by pharaohs and the like. If they had not been so hard to breed in captivity ( Akbar the Great had over 9,000 cheetahs), we would have had pet cheetahs today. Cheetahs still exhibit a lot of the more domestic traits, more so than any other wild cat.
Another issue are wolves and wolf-hybrids. For some reason, people seem to think the opposite about wolves. They look so much like dogs that they must be the same, right?
Dogs are actually wolves that never reach maturity. In a wolf pack, the cubs act childish and playful like domestic dogs to keep them in social order - when they reach maturity, they loose this 'eager-to-please' demeanor, and become actual adult wolves. It is very dangerous to be near wolves in an enclosure when you are sick or exhibit weakness. Probably almost as dangerous as being in a cage with a wild tiger.
Another interesting thing on tame animals:
A domestication experiment was done on foxes in russia in mass. Selectively breeding the ones that were most tame, a strange thing started happening - the foxes began to change colours, get spots, floppy ears and to "bark" and whimper for attention like dogs. These foxes had a viable domesticated population in under 40 years.
http://reactor-core.org/taming-foxes.ht
Semi-exotic wild cats:
Mostly cats, these are a new trend in breeding. Domestic cats are interbred with wild cats, such as the serval to create new breed independent of either. Such as the "bengal" (which are hardly part wild anymore) and Savannah:
BigCatRescue (which I really deplore for their stance that "if a species has to live in a cage it shouldn't live at all" and thus snipping any animal they come in contact with including endangered ones - support snowleopardtrust! yay!) claims that some of these cats are "wild" and can't live on normal house cat diets. First of all, the savannah and the safari are on their way to domestication, of course they are going to be wild to begin with. Second - well, duh. NO pet should be surviving on the horrible diet people tout to them. Corn as a main ingredient? COME ON. XD Most of these cats, as well as domestic dogs and cats are allergic to gluten and should be fed meat-based diets.
Also, you can tell how much wild blood these cats will have by looking at their generational chart. "F1" means first cross, "F2" is second generation and so on.
Savannah: Tall lanky cat - serval/domestic. Very active cat, loves to jump, walks on a leash, and likes water.
Safari: Geoffroy's Cat/Domestic is much smaller than the serval cross, but still large. It loves water and is usually more affectionate than a savannah.
Bengal: By far the most domestic of the three. They come in brown-spotted, marble, snow, and silver. Asian Leopard Cat x domestic:
(most) Photos courtesy of:
http://www.bengal-cat.net/
http://www.savannahcatbreed.com/
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