Are Exotic Pets Really So Bad?

Google "exotic pets" and you'll see a long list of private companies that sell exotic pets like primates, large mammals, "educational animals," and even coral. Lower down on the list, you might see results focused on environmental and animal welfare concerns, but they clearly don't dominate the mainstream discussion of exotic pets.

What's wrong with that?

Aside from the should-be obvious point that animals like chimps and tigers are not meant to live in a house, or in the U.S., and definitely not in a house in the U.S.—there are public safety concerns, and even larger concerns from conservationists.

Public safety because things like an 18-pound Burmese python found slithering in your favorite neighborhood park could happen, like it did near Cleveland. (Never assume that people with exotic pets will, when done with the animals, know better than to release them into the wild. Nature's nature, right?)

Ohio—along with Alabama, Idaho, Missouri and Montana—have the most lax laws for exotic animals in the country, so it's fair to assume this kind of thing is more likely to happen in these states than in others.

And those lax laws are a point of contention, since they do not discourage irresponsible behavior. People can buy a bear cub because it's cute, for example, and have no consideration for a year or so down the road. "It's just a free-for-all in Ohio," Wayne Pacelle of the Humane Society told AP. "Tigers, wolves, bears in a suburban Lorain County community: It is a disaster waiting to happen."

Then there are conservation-related concerns: plummeting wild populations, disruption to local ecosystems, and ecologically devastating methods for capturing animals in the first place. (To capture chimps, for example, poachers often kill the mother in order to get at the baby, and cyanide is frequently used to catch fish.)

Illegal wildlife trafficking is said to be the second largest illegal trade worldwide.

That includes endangered species from snakes to chimps and leopard cubs. And animals that many people are more innocent-sounding pets to keep, like exotic fish, are often not only caught young (leading to depleted stocks) but also with cyanide—which poisons other species of fish in the water, damages their eggs and larvae, kills or damages coral, and poses health hazards to local people.