Where does your new exotic pet come from?
Many wild animals are captured from the environment to be part of the illegal trafficking of species. This ranks 3rd in the volume of business of organized crime that generates more money worldwide. These poor animals can be used as money. As an exotic pet or for other purposes. Despite the fact that Spain already has the first action plan against illegal trafficking and international poaching of animal and plant species, it has been approved last February by the Council of Ministers.
“If we acquire a wild or exotic animal, we may be favoring this illicit business, poaching. And, therefore, the extinction of numerous species,” says the María Pifarré, veterinarian of the Council of Veterinary Associations of Catalonia. “To get a baby chimpanzee, first they have to kill its mother. We must be aware that these whims are expensive. And that the place of this animal is its natural habitat with its mother”.
In the case of acquiring an exotic pet, it must always be accompanied by an international document. This guarantees that it has not been captured in its natural habitat. But, that it has been bred in captivity for this purpose.
Think about your well-being above all
Think beforehand about whether you can offer your exotic pet a suitable environment with everything they need. When you acquire or adopt a pet, you are supposed to do it to give it love. And a life with the best possible conditions. Therefore, you must take into account what its environment is like. Also, in what conditions it needs to live (space, climate, activity, etc.).
“You have to be responsible. If you already have to take a thousand care with a dog or a cat, accustomed to human contact, with a cockatoo or a macaw, you should try to make their environment the most similar to the original one”, Pifarré sentence. You should ask yourself if you are really willing to assume that responsibility. Or other issues such as the space you have and the hours of dedication that its maintenance will require. Or the extra cleaning tasks that it entails.
By New Africa
Never betray your exotic pet alone
Never leave your exotic pet in the field, the park below your house, or the first place you find. We must not let ourselves be guided by ‘fashions’. And then when you have become bored, tired, or cannot continue to maintain it, abandon them in the first place you find. First, because they are living beings and secondly because you can cause an irreversible environmental impact for the poor exotic pet.
As in the case of the Argentine parrot, invasive exotic species that, according to the SEO/Birdlife platform, in 2015 had approximately 20,000 specimens of this species throughout Spain. Of which almost 6,000 live in Catalonia. Or that of the apple snail, which affects the ecosystem and agriculture of the Ebro Delta.
Do not bring a wild animal home
The expert does not recommend having raccoons as an exotic pet, now fashionable on social networks, no matter how ‘adorable’ they may seem. Since they transmit diseases such as rabies. In Spain eradicated, but not in places like the American continent, as well as other wild animals. “As much as we have a ‘domesticated’ wild animal, its instinct can surface at any time. Since they have not gone through centuries of adaptation like cats and dogs,” concludes the veterinarian.
