Animal Testing

SHOULD EXOTIC ANIMALS BE KEPT AS PETS?

For most people, it is just a matter of going to the pound or the pet shop to find a loyal companion. But, some prefer to travel to greater lengths in search of that one special friend – a big cat from the Middle East, a crocodile from the depths of the Nile – who knows? No matter what their appearance, behavior or habitat, all these animals have onething in common: they are exotic, wild and dangerous. Once they are raised within a home, could these animals be tamed or would their natural instincts take over?
The main reason some people believe that exotic animals should not be kept as pets is because of their unreliable and rebellious nature. These creatures, in a few years, would shed the adorable look they came with and they will grow intouncontrollable creatures. "You cannot be messing around with things like lions, tigers, bears, primates and just hope for the best. Someone's going to hurt," said Richard Farinato, the Humane Society director who currently works at a sanctuary in Texas for discarded or dangerous exotic pets. These animals, which all come from homes in the wild, rarely bond with their owners and would have strongerimpulses to act upon their instincts than domesticated animals. Usually, this would lead to harming other people: anyone from their handlers to bystanders.
However, wild animals are not the only creatures with fangs and claws. The director of the Catoctin Wildlife Preserve and Zoo in Thurmont, Richard Hahn, pointed out that on average, more people are hurt by dogs than by exotic pets - and dogsare accepted as common household animals. If it were a matter of safety, shouldn’t dogs, cats and other domestic pets be banned as well as the exotic ones since, at some point, they had all been proven harmful?
While it is completely legal, sometimes even encouraged, to take animals from the wild and raise them in a zoo, the same could not be said for raising them as pets. A zoo is a placespecialized in keeping and caring for exotic animals. The creatures are looked after by trainers/handlers that work with them day and night and have received special education on the matter. Also, zoos’ provide housing that is adapted to mimic the animal’s natural environments or meet their specific needs. A home, most probably, would not be able to meet the necessary specifications and could alsocause the animal to be isolated from those of its own kind, resulting in depression, sickness, food refusal and many more problems, as most of these animals are kept alone. The handler’s lack of knowledge and/or facilities could also harm the animals or their owners, or most of the time, both.
On the other hand, this does not mean that all homes could not provide animals with the right care and allzoos could. In a home, each animal would usually be taken care of more closely but, in a zoo, there are many animals to be looked after and it is easy not to notice small problems since the animal is not the sole attention of the keeper. Holli Friedland of Baltimore, who works with a reptile and amphibian rescue group said, "I think that if you have the space and you have the money and you havethe knowledge, then you should be able to keep what you want to keep.” For instance, if an exotic pet had to have a check-up with the vet, it is likely that it would be at a more ‘posh’ animal hospital, which would also ensure its comfort as well as its health, unlike a zoo animal, which would probably not get the comforts or facilities that the pets would get. This is because in a zoo, there is abudget for how much to spend, but an individual owner could spend as much on their pets as they would like, to ensure the well-being of the animals.
Nevertheless, there are also many disadvantages of keeping exotic pets. When an ‘exotic animal’ is mentioned, it usually means that the species is either rare or near extinction, along with having an origin in a far away country and not commonly...