Note: The pets in this article are limited to animals that have established mature commercial breeding, but are not necessarily legal in all countries or regions or do not rule out the possibility of mixing wild individuals in the market.
(There are pictures of spiders, pythons, etc. in front, please speed up your hands and be mentally prepared…
The image of the tarantula in the palm of your hand is always very eye-catching; and it has to be said that such images do a little positive to improve the spider’s reputation for being demonized.
Yes, most spiders are timid and harmless creatures, and tarantulas—especially many species in the New World—are gentle giants. But now more and more responsible tarantula breeders have realized that under no circumstances should you be in close contact with a tarantula like the one pictured here. In the more core tarantula forums and Facebook groups in Europe and the United States, photos of spiders getting started will be criticized or deleted; even if some owners on YouTube have touched spiders with their bare hands because of display and other reasons in the video, they will also emphasize catching spiders at the same time. Tarantulas are not supposed to get started.
There’s no evidence that tarantulas can be domesticated, frequent contact doesn’t make spiders accustomed to humans, and even mild individuals can bite or kick as a result of sudden mood changes or the wrong timing of interruptions. Although tarantula bites are generally not serious, the bitten owner is likely to injure the spider or run away in a fright.
And tarantulas are stealthy hunters, preferring to hide in a sheltered place for a long time to be alone. When a dog hears that it wants to go out and let the wind out, it can run faster than anyone else, but not a spider. There is a saying that “the invisible tarantula is the happy tarantula”. No bird spider, no bird spider, you will be happy if you don’t bird it. If you choose to keep tarantulas, you have to accept this placement play. (“Ah, I haven’t seen my Brazilian black for two years, and it has grown from a five-cent to a one-dollar coin!”)
Therefore, it is a big mistake to say that “rose is an entry-level species for beginners, and you can get started with good temperament”. First, even a relatively mild species of tarantula should not be used (not to mention that the behavior of roses is often unpredictable), and secondly, rose is a kind of tarantula that I do not recommend keeping. Years, and artificial breeding is rare, almost all wild individuals on the market. Wild + “novice-oriented” can be described as a textbook-style wrong pet template.
Tarantula forum Arachnoboards has a section called Bite Reports, in which there were 28 reports of being bitten by orange babes (the most famous berserker-type grumpy tarantula), and those bitten by “tame” red roses. 29 cases were reported. The former is mostly an accident caused by the breeder’s operating error, while the latter is basically the result of playing with it (as a control, there are only 4 reports of being bitten by curly hairs, which are also moderately reared).
The giant green iguana, lying quietly on the owner’s arm or shoulder, looks very cool; this is the enlightenment of many people (including me) to lizard pets. Unfortunately, at least for the average breeder with limited experience and conditions, green iguanas are often a very poor choice.
Adult green iguanas, especially males, need a lot of space and are territorial: males in estrus even smash mirrors and glass because they see their shadows as competitors. example. Although the little green hyenas in the pet store look cute, it won’t take long for them to grow into brothers who have the strength to drive people into the hospital. Green iguanas are vegetarians, and many people have the wrong and unnecessary stereotype of “herbivore loves peace” – a large part of it may be early education such as the little white rabbit and the big bad wolf or the happy goat and the big wolf. pot. The angry adult green iguana can easily bite you into red and white, and the pictures will not be posted. If you are interested in Google “Iguana bites”.
“食我大死亡翻滚啦！”
Green iguanas can be behaviorally trained, and an experienced and responsible owner can raise a gentle and friendly green iguana. That’s why I’m against tarantulas in principle (because accidents can’t be reduced by taming), but I don’t dislike the picture of holding a green iguana. And iguanas are not predators, an iguana with a serious face ready to anus will give people enough signals that as long as you get out of the way, I won’t shoot. But in any case, when you see a cute little iguana or a handsome big iguana and have the urge to feed, you should first figure out the size of the adult, the importance of attack power and training.
There is a video on Youtube called “How to raise a green iguana”. The host blackened the green iguana from beginning to end, and at the end picked up a round-tailed lizard (commonly known as a rock iguana), and then said ” So, I choose the rock iguana!” (Although the rock iguana is bigger and stronger, its personality is much better than that of the green iguana; however, please be reminded that both of them are currently illegal to raise without a license in China…)
When I was very young, I watched a foreign pet show that I can’t remember the name of. In one episode, there was a huge and sticky monitor lizard, which was very impressive. But in terms of basic combat power, the monitor lizard is higher than the green iguana. Green iguanas attack in self-defense or to protect territory, but monitor lizards are top predators. Why do you say giant monitor lizards? Because some monitor lizards are actually very small…
Monitor lizards are very intelligent and can be described as dogs among lizards. In Europe and the United States, there are legal pet monitor lizards that have been artificially bred and behaviorally trained for many generations; a properly trained monitor lizard can establish a very friendly relationship with people, neither treating humans as food nor enemies; for example, this one in the picture is very accustomed Humans, if they were wild individuals, would have made the buddies who hugged them all over their heads.
but! All of this is based on experienced breeders + mature behavioral training + local tyrant-like breeding conditions. Whenever I see people living in apartments showing off their Nile monitor lizards or water monitor lizard seedlings, all I can say is:
Burmese pythons, reticulated pythons, anacondas, rock pythons, these snakes can grow to very exaggerated sizes. Photographs of getting up close and personal with these giant snakes do have the positive aspect of improving the public perception of demonized snakes—most of which are gentle and timid creatures, including these tame pythons, which have been domesticated for generations. A giant python that is used to humans is quite friendly, but the basic attack power is there; to interact with such a giant beast, at least an experienced breeder should control the field. As for feeding, it is true that some owners can meet their living needs, but large pythons are definitely not pets that most people should touch. In fact, in the United States, the breeding of large snakes such as the Burmese python anaconda is restricted and not as open as the small and medium-sized pythons such as ball pythons or red-tailed pythons. As for China, where it is illegal to keep all pythons without a license, let alone touch large pythons.
There was a story about a woman who was bitten by a snake while traveling:
The interaction with the python has educational public welfare activities like the first picture, and there are also negative teaching materials like this. The bitten girl herself has no responsibility, after all, this does not belong to the common sense of ordinary people’s life. But a snake charmer (this kind of person does not deserve to be called a breeder) is completely a second-hand person who thinks he can do it when he sees other people raising snakes. He catches snakes in a very aggressive way for snakes, but what he catches is his own temper. A stinky reticulated python, most people don’t stop it when they approach the snake in the wrong way, and complete a set of fancy tricks to death, but unfortunately it is someone else (maybe a snake) who is injured, zero points.
The “Turtle Immortal” from District 11 is also an internet celebrity. The old man raised the shield-armed tortoise, commonly known as the Sulcata tortoise, which is one of the most popular pet tortoises.
Like many of the animals above, it is not legal to keep Sulcata tortoises without a license in our country. In fact, there are a lot of people who are raised, and there are not many people in charge. Whether it is legal or unreasonable will not be discussed here. I’ll take the U.S. as an example, where the commercial breeding of sulcatas is very mature (the artificial population of sulcatas in the United States may be larger than their wild populations in Africa), and they are legal to raise; but they are actually quite troublesome. pet.
Sulcata is the third largest land tortoise in the world; apart from the two island monsters, they are the largest inland tortoise. This means that an adult Sulcata needs a large yard. It’s also an excavator, so it’s best if your large yard can withstand digging. If you keep it in temperate zones, you must ensure that there is enough indoor breeding space in winter. There are many people in the United States who look at the little turtle and buy it when they think it is cute. After raising it, they finally realize that they have no place to keep it, and then they send them to the zoo one after another. The zoo is also very wrong. You are not a rare wild animal. , but a batch-breeding pet, will you throw it to me if you can’t keep it yourself? I don’t take this plate. And some responsible Sulcata breeders, the first thing they do when they encounter a new customer is to persuade him to think about whether he has the conditions to raise these giant tortoises.
This is the sulcata breeding grounds of Kamp Kenan, a live turtle broadcaster. The big hole under the tree was dug by the youtube. . .
Similar situations are common with other pets, such as aquariums; many people buy a red-tailed catfish, alligator gar, or walrus (Arapaima) without thinking about what to do when these monsters grow up.
Seeing this, some people might think, these are the pots of exotic pets – but I hate the word exotic pets very much, the name is in the beginning to the end
1. Demonize some very common animals,
2. Smear some serious and responsible owners,
3. Attract a group of people with a cool and curious mentality to follow the trend and raise animals that they do not know and do not really love.
Pets are pets, there is nothing different, wild animals that are not suitable for keeping can not be called pets at all; and there is no animal in the history of human pets that has more troubles than the following two:
There is no need to put more cute pictures, because the entire Internet is the fan club of these two masters plus a little bit of other content.
On the flip side, however, few invasive species can claim to be doing more than the domestic cat; at least in terms of colony size. Even the most notorious invasive species, such as the red fire ant and the brazilian tortoise, are not capable of such a global invasion as the cat, sweeping ecosystems from deserts to islands; a few other global invasions such as the German cockroach and bed bugs , they don’t really run wild in the wild like cats do, but are confined to the indoor environment constructed by humans. There is a lot of information on the threat of free-range cats and stray cats to wildlife, and there is no need to say more here.
As for dogs, it is the fourth most deadly animal on the planet (mostly through rabies), after mosquitoes, Homo sapiens and venomous snakes. Stray and off-leash dogs are a lesser (but still strong) threat to the ecology than cats, and far more harassing and threatening to other residents than stray cats.
However, except for a few countries such as Australia that have taken strong measures to control stray cats and dogs, the problem of stray cats and dogs in most areas is getting worse; those cute photos of stray and free-range cats and dogs are also misleading, making many People think that they should also be “a free member of nature”.
Cats and dogs are the longest companion animals to humans, and probably the best pets. But the sheer number of irresponsible cat and dog owners overwhelms the owners of any other animal, and the negative impact far exceeds that of any other pet. No traction, no training, no scavenging, no immunity, no containment, no sterilization, just one of the miracles in the history of human domestication has become the strongest ecological public enemy, and the other has become one of the four kings of murder.