How Many Exotic Animals Die Each Year
The Dangers of Keeping Exotic Pets
Exotic animals — lions, tigers, wolves, bears, reptiles, non-human being primates — belong in their natural habitats and not in the hands of private individuals equally "pets." By their very nature, these animals are wild and potentially dangerous and, equally such, do not adjust well to a captive environment.
Because the majority of states practice not keep accurate records of exotic animals entering their state, it is incommunicable to determine exactly how many exotic animals are privately held as pets, but the number is estimated to be quite high. An estimated 5,000 tigers lonely are held by individual individuals.
The American Veterinarian Medical Association, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have all expressed opposition to the possession of certain exotic animals by individuals.
Exotic animals practise not brand expert companions. They require special intendance, housing, diet, and maintenance that the average person cannot provide. When in the hands of private individuals, the animals endure due to poor care. They also pose condom and health risks to their owners and whatever person coming into contact with them.
Individuals possessing exotic animals often attempt to alter the nature of the brute rather than the nature of the care provided. Such tactics include confinement in small, arid enclosures, chaining, beating "into submission," or fifty-fifty painful mutilations, such as declawing and tooth removal.
If and when the individual realizes he/she can no longer treat an exotic pet, he/she usually turns to zoos and other institutions such as sanctuaries to relieve him/her of the responsibleness. Still, all the zoos and accredited institutions could not possibly adjust the number of unwanted exotic animals. Consequently, the bulk of these animals are euthanized, abandoned, or doomed to alive in deplorable conditions.
The Exotic Animal Pet Trade
Every yr, a variety of sources provides millions of animals to the exotic pet trade. Animals are captured from their native habitats and transported to various countries to be sold as pets. Others are surplus animals from zoos or their offspring. Lawn breeders besides supply exotic animals.
Information technology is absurdly easy to obtain an exotic pet. More than 1,000 Internet sites offering to sell, requite care communication, and provide conversation rooms where buyers and sellers tin can haggle over a cost. Helping to facilitate the exotic pet trade is the Creature Finders' Guide, which carries ads from dealers, private parties, breeders, ranchers, and zoos offering big cats, monkeys, and other exotic animals for sale.
The sellers of these animals, however, brand no mention of the state or local laws regulating individual possession of exotics, or of the dangers, difficulties, physical and physiological needs of the animals they peddle. The suffering of the animals in the hands of unqualified and hapless buyers appears to exist of no concern in the lucrative exotic pet trade.
Public Safety Hazard
Exotic animals are inherently unsafe to the individuals who possess them, to their neighbors, and to the community at big. Across the country, many incidents have been reported where exotic animals held in private hands attacked humans and other animals, and escaped from their enclosures and freely roamed the community. Children and adults have been mauled by tigers, bitten by monkeys, and asphyxiated by snakes.
By their very nature, exotic animals are unsafe. Although most exotic animals are territorial and require group interactions, an exotic pet typically is isolated and spends the majority of his/her twenty-four hour period in a pocket-size enclosure unable to roam and express natural behaviors freely. These animals are time bombs waiting to explode.
Monkeys are the most common not-human primates held by private individuals. At the age of two, monkeys begin to exhibit unpredictable beliefs. Males tend to become aggressive, and both males and females seize with teeth to defend themselves and to institute authorization. Reported accept been many monkey bites that resulted in serious injury to the private who possessed the animal, to a neighbour, or to a stranger on the street. According to the CDC, 52 people reported being bitten by macaque monkeys between 1990 to 1997. CDC reported, even so, that "owners of pet macaques are frequently reluctant to report bite injuries from their pets, even to their medical care providers" for fear that their animal will exist confiscated and possibly killed.
Non-domesticated felines, such equally lions, tigers, leopards, and cougars, are commonly held as pets. These exotic animals are cute and cuddly when they are immature only have the potential to impale or seriously injure people and other animals as they grow. Even a seemingly friendly and loving animal tin can attack unsuspecting individuals. Many large cats have escaped from their cages and terrorized communities. Several of these incidents accept resulted in either serious injury to the persons who came in contact with the animal, or the expiry of the animal, or both.
Reptiles, including all types of snakes and lizards, pose safety risks to humans every bit well. Many incidents have been reported of escapes, strangulations, and bites from pet reptiles across the country. Snakes are the most mutual "pet" reptiles — about 3% of U.S. households possess 7.iii one thousand thousand pet reptiles — and take the potential to inflict serious injury through a bite or constriction. According to the University of Florida, more than 7,000 venomous snake bites are reported annually in the United States (it is uncertain how many of these snakes are pets), 15 of which issue in death. Moreover, in that location have been several reported incidences involving strangulation past snakes. For example, on August 28, 1999, in Centralia, IL, a 3-year-one-time male child was strangled to decease past the family'south pet python. The parents were charged with child endangerment and unlawful possession of a dangerous animal.
Human Health Risk
Exotic animals pose serious health risks to humans. Many exotic animals are carriers of zoonotic diseases, such every bit Canker B, Monkey Pox, and Salmonellosis, all of which are catching to humans.
Canker B-virus: 80 to 90 pct of all macaque monkeys are infected with Canker B-virus or Simian B, a virus that is harmless to monkeys only often fatal in humans. Monkeys shed the virus intermittently in saliva or genital secretions, which more often than not occur when the monkey is sick, under stress, or during convenance season. At any given time, nigh 2% of infected macaque monkeys are shedding the virus. A person who is bitten, scratched, or sneezed or spit on while shedding occurs runs the risk of contracting the disease. Monkeys rarely prove any signs or symptoms of shedding, making information technology nearly impossible to know when i is at risk.
Reported cases of infection in humans are very rare; since the identification of the virus in 1932, there have only been 31 documented homo infections by B virus, 21 of which were fatal. According to the CDC, the reason for "such an apparently low rate of transmission may include infrequent B virus shedding by macaques, cross-reactive immunity confronting B virus stimulated by canker simplex virus infection, and undetected asymptomatic infection." However, the frequency of Herpes B infection in humans has never been fairly studied and thus information technology is difficult to quantify how many people are actually infected with the virus. Persons who possess or work with infected monkeys are presumed to be in constant peril of potentially contracting the virus.
Bites from non-human primates can cause severe lacerations. Wounds may go infected, with the potential to achieve the bone and cause permanent deformity. The frequency of bites remains a mystery. Although it is widely acknowledged that non-human primate bites are some of the worst beast bites, little research regarding them exists.
Monkeys accept also been known to transmit the Ebola virus, monkey pox, and other deadly illnesses.
Salmonellosis: Probably 90 percentage of all reptiles carry and shed salmonella in their feces. Iguanas, snakes, lizards, and turtles are common carriers of the bacterium. Reptiles that carry salmonella do not show any symptoms, thus there is no simple manner to tell which reptiles play host to the microbe and which do non, because even those that have it do not constantly shed the bacterium.
Salmonellosis associated with exotic pets has been described every bit ane of the virtually important public health diseases affecting more people and animals than whatever other single disease. The CDC estimates that 93,000 salmonella cases caused by exposure to reptiles are reported each year in the Us.
Salmonella infection is caused when individuals eat afterwards declining to launder their hands properly after handling a reptile or objects the reptile contaminated (this tin can be either indirect or straight contact with infected reptiles). Salmonella bacteria practice not make the brute sick, but in people tin cause serious cases of severe diarrhea (with or without claret), headache, angst, nausea, fever, vomiting, abdominal cramps, and even death — especially in young children, the elderly, and those with immune-compromised systems. In addition, salmonella infection can outcome in sepsis and meningitis (particularly in children) equally well as invade the intestinal mucosa and enter the bloodstream causing septicemia and death.
In March 1999, the CDC contacted every country wellness department to determine whether state regulations existed for sale of reptiles and distribution of information near contracting salmonella from reptiles. Forty-viii states responded — three (CA, CT, MI) had regulations requiring pet stores to provide information nigh salmonella to persons purchasing a turtle. Two states (KS, MD) require salmonella data to be provided to persons purchasing any reptile, and iii states (AZ, MN, WY) prohibit reptiles in 24-hour interval care centers and long-term-care facilities.
During 1996-1998, 16 unlike state health departments reported to the CDC salmonella infections in persons who had directly or indirect contact with pet reptiles, and in 1994-1995, 13 different state health departments reported salmonella infections. The CDC recommends that children, people with compromised allowed systems, and the elderly should avoid all contact with reptiles and not possess them as pets.
Laws Governing Private Possession of Exotic Animals
The sale and possession of exotic animals is regulated by a patchwork of federal, state and local laws that generally vary past community and past animal. Individuals possessing exotic animals must be in compliance with all federal laws besides as any state, city, and county laws.
Federal Laws: 3 federal laws regulate exotic animals — the Endangered Species Act, the Public Health Service Human activity, and the Lacey Act. Nevertheless, these laws primarily regulate the importation of exotic animals into the United states and not private possession.
Under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) it is illegal to possess, sell, or buy an endangered species regardless to whether it's over the Internet or not. The ESA does not regulate individual possession, it merely allows the U.Due south. Fish & Wild fauna Service (USFWS) to prosecute individuals who illegally possess endangered species. It should exist noted that "generic" tigers (subspecies that accept been interbred) are not considered endangered and, as such, can be legally bred and possessed.
The Public Health Services Act prohibits the importation of non-human being primates and their offspring into the United States after October 1975 for any use other than scientific, educational, or exhibition purposes.
The Lacey Act allows the U.Due south. government to prosecute persons in possession of an animal illegally obtained in a foreign country or some other state. Again, this Human activity does non regulate private possession, it merely allows the USFWS to prosecute individuals who have illegally obtained exotic animals.
State Laws: The state governments possess the say-so to regulate exotic animals privately held. Laws vary from state to country on the type of regulation imposed and the specific animals regulated. Some states ban private possession of exotic animals (i.e. they prohibit possession of at least large cats, wolves, bears, non-human being primates, and dangerous reptiles); other states have a partial ban (i.e. they prohibit possession of some exotic animals but non all); and others crave a license or let to possess exotic animals; and while other states neither prohibit nor require a license, they may crave some information from the possessor (veterinarian certificate, certification that animal was legally acquired, etc.).
Local Laws: Many cities and counties have adopted ordinances that are more stringent than the state law. Mostly, the City or Canton Council accept determined that possession of certain exotic species poses a serious threat to the health, safety, and welfare of the residents of the customs as a consequence of a contempo attack in the area, an escape, or by the virtue of the animals' physical attributes and natural behavior and, as such, adopts an ordinance regulating or banning private possession.
Some people oftentimes sidestep existing laws or bans past condign licensed breeders or exhibitors under the USDA and/or by having their belongings rezoned. In addition, individuals frequently move out of metropolis limits or to a new land once a restriction or ban is imposed.
What to Do
Y'all tin can do several things to assistance stop private possession of exotic animals:
- For the animals' sake and for your health and safety, please practice not buy exotic animals as "pets."
- If yous observe an exotic creature existence abused, living in deplorable conditions, etc., report it to the advisable animate being control agency.
- Educate others. Write a Letter to the Editor. Share this fact sheet with friends and family.
- Support legislation at all levels to prohibit private possession of exotic animals.
- Find out how your land, city and canton regulates private possession of exotic animals. If your land, urban center, or canton does not prohibit private possession, contact your state senator and representative or your urban center and county council members and urge them to innovate legislation banning possession of exotic animals.
What Government Agencies and Public Officials Are Saying
"The AVMA strongly opposes the keeping of wild carnivore species of animals [and reptiles and amphibians] equally pets and believes that all commercial traffic of these animals for such purpose should exist prohibited."
The American Veterinary Medical Clan
"Large wild and exotic cats such every bit lions, tigers, cougars, and leopards are dangerous animals … Considering of these animals' potential to kill or severely injure both people and other animals, an untrained person should non go on them as pets. Doing so poses serious risks to family, friends, neighbors, and the general public. Even an beast that can be friendly and loving can be very dangerous."
The United States Department of Agriculture
"Pet reptiles should be kept out of households where children anile less than five years or immunocompromised persons alive. Families expecting a new child should remove the pet reptile from the home before the infant arrives."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
"Buying or giving exotic pets such as monkeys, hedgehogs, prairie dogs, reptiles, or other wildlife potentially can be dangerous to both humans and the animals themselves."
Veterinarian Jane Mahlow, Manager of the Texas Department of Health Zoonosis Control Sectionalisation
"People buy these [large cats] when they're kittens and don't have the foresight to see in four years that kitten is going to be 500 pounds, and instead of ii bottles information technology is going to need xxx to 50 pounds of meat a 24-hour interval. They try to make a pet out of something that volition never be a pet."
Terry Mattive of T & D Mountain Range Menagerie, a sanctuary for unwanted, abused and exploited jungle cats in Penn Creek, PA
"Macaques [monkeys] are aggressive and are known to carry diseases, including herpes B, which can exist fatal to humans … My opinion is primates brand very poor pets."
Dr. Michael Cranfield, veterinarian at the Baltimore Zoo and an skillful on primates
Source: https://www.bornfreeusa.org/campaigns/animals-in-captivity/the-dangers-of-keeping-exotic-pets/
Posted by: scottovion1999.blogspot.com
0 Response to "How Many Exotic Animals Die Each Year"
Post a Comment