There’s a lot of people who keep exotic and dangerous “pets” . It should be totally outlawed. There’s been a lot of incidents that have happened over the years where people and kids were injured and killed by some animal that belonged in the wild.Oh by the way,pit bulls and their owners should be outlawed as well.
Agreed and agreed. I would like to make one exception, however, and that is for cheetahs. They are so critically endangered that I hate thinking about their existence being left in the hands of native Africans. Besides that, there is the theory that they were originally domesticated by the Egyptians for hunting, the evidence being in ancient Egyptian art and the similarity of dna between individual cheetahs. They are the least wild of the big cats as far as behavior goes, as well.
As for their endangerment, if you want more of something, make it a marketable commodity. That’s why we have countless chickens and cows. Besides, if wealthy Arabs can drive around with them in their Lamborghinis I don’t see why a responsible Texan rancher shouldn’t be allowed to keep a breeding pair on his land.
Not every private facility is some yahoo that wants a tiger as a “pet”. There ARE a number of world-class facilities that started as private owners. Some of them have done groundbreaking research. Good examples include SOS Care near San Diego, and Fossil Rim in Arizona.
Likewise, if ‘private’ ownership is outlawed (as Big Cat Rescue and their fellow travellers would dearly love to see happen), these very same world class (but privately owned, funded and run) facilities will be closed at the same time as roadside shitholes and backyard owners. The publicly-run, AZA-Accredited facilities just don’t have enough enclosure space and resources to maintain genetically viable populations between them. Of course, I (and many others) have been making this very same argument for several decades now, but it simply falls on deaf ears.
Unfortunately, the Animal Rights activists have now mostly won the battle for public hearts and minds, and the paradigm really HAS shifted to a policy of ‘managing to so-called ‘dignified extinction’.