by margaret hillcroft

Created on: November 08, 2008   Last Updated: December 18, 2009

One fine day, humans will awaken and appreciate fully what a wonderful planet we inhabit and what a miraculous organism the living world, with all its innate intelligence, is. How many losses and catastrophes it will take for that day to arrive we cannot know but when it does we will know that the place for "exotic" animals is in the wild, living freely in the way in which nature intended, untroubled by the activities of the human world.

What is an "exotic pet" ? I assume , for the purposes of this article, an "exotic pet" to be a mammal, reptile, amphibian, bird or insect which has been imported from a very different environment and which requires specialist care, diet, accommodation and conditions. It is the kind of pet which will cause your friends to gasp with amazement and you will be able to wonder, on a daily basis, at its beauty, its rarity and its originality. It could be any creature from any location in the world which is not commonly kept in a domestic household. and although its presence might give its owner great kudos and pleasure, does the keeping of such creatures as pets really do anything positive for the animal concerned or for wildlife as a whole?

The fashion for keeping wierd and wonderful creatures as pets, status symbols or whatever function they fulfilled in the lives of their human captors, began in the Victorian era when rich landed gentry began to import peacocks, ostriches, non-native species of deer, zebra and even the big cats to show off to their neighbours. What they could not keep alive they killed and had stuffed or made into rugs. All over the world species were collected and hunted until, in the middle of the last century, animal populations began to decline and hunting became unpopular.

Since then, zoos have concentrated on conservation and spent billions on enclosures and living conditions which are as near to natural for the animal concerned as is possible to enable breeding programs to be developed successfully. Game reserves have been created to protect species and enable them to live a natural life fulfilling their role within the ecosystems to which they are indigenous. Over recent decades, science has come to recognise that the loss of even one tiny creature within an ecosystem can be seriously damaging to the whole. Environmentalists realise that each and every living thing has a vital part to play in the sustainability of the natural world, a world which we need to be functioning properly if we are not to cause

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