Dippy Exotic Pet Rant of the Day | One Green Planet

  “3 Ridiculous Reasons People Give for Keeping Exotic Animals as Pets”

 (One Green Planet’s Corrine Henn couldn’t fail harder at criticizing exotic pet ownership if she tried.)

    “Despite the myriad of animal and human welfare issues that keeping an exotic animal as a pet poses, there is very little regulation in place in the U.S. that prohibits people from continuing this bizarre hobby.”

What “human welfare” issues are involved with exotic pets? Oh, I know, how about denying people pet ownership rights, which has been proven by numerous studies to benefit human health. These findings, of course, were considering dogs and cats, but there’s no reason they can’t apply to other species.


However, as it is “bizarre”, the ditzy author believes exotic pet ownership is inherently terrible, and here are her laughable ‘rebuttals’.

    “They state on their website, “animals are personal property and we oppose legislation that restricts the private ownership or use of animals.” They then go on to state that bans on exotic animal ownership force owners, “to choose between giving up their beloved non-human family member or keep the animal illegally.”

  "How one moment a wild animal is considered “personal property” and a “loved family member” the next, is beyond our comprehension, but this points to the great disconnect between feigning care and doing what’s best for animals that are ketp as exotic pets.”

While it might be a strange concept to ignorant and non-thinking individuals, pets are property regardless of what you think about them. And trust me; you want it to stay that way, even if it doesn’t sound pleasing to human sensibilities.

Your right to possess a dog in the first place comes from the fact that it is deemed as ‘property’ by the law. Obviously, if animals weren’t considered property, you couldn’t buy dogs, cats, hamsters, or any pet. In a perfect world, there would be no dog overpopulation problem, and those who think they are not a part of the dog-buying industry because they’ve ‘adopted’ their pet would probably seek new companions from reputable breeders.

Well, too bad.

Who says anyone has the right to manipulate canines with selective breeding for human benefit?

The word ‘property’ only denotes that you have the right to keep and make decisions for your dog (or any pet) and that another human cannot violate your rights and steal, harm, or kill it. It also makes you responsible for the proper care of that animal. Why is this so horrible?

Just because a chair is also property does not mean you can treat an animal you own the same way as one. We have animal welfare laws in place that make it illegal to abuse your living ‘property’. Exotic pet owners simply want the same rights that dog owners have…to possess the pets of their choice.

So whining about this term is due to a kindergartener’s understanding of legal concepts.

1. To Benefit Wild Populations (One Green Planet Claims)

    “While this is a nice thought, people who purchase exotic animals are usually doing so for themselves, not because they wish to benefit the wild species as a whole. Most exotic animals who are kept as pets never learn how to survive in the wild, therefore making it impossible for them to ever be released to join wild populations. In fact, studies have shown that wild members of a species are less likely to mate with a captive member of the species, completely debunking the idea of repopulation via captive breeding.”

First of all, yes, exotic pet owners get pets for themselves, just like all other pet owners. Duh.


But because of the obscene amount of criticism received, some owners like to suggest that captive exotic animals can contribute to conservation.


WHAT DO DOGS AND CATS CONTRIBUTE TO CONSERVATION?


Obviously, they do nothing but harm the environment (‘Rewilding Australia’ suggested that Australians start keeping pet quolls instead of cats to benefit the ecosystem), yet exotic pet owners still feel they need to make excuses for their pet choices, and that is ridiculous. However, the idea that some captive animals can help restore animal populations that are in trouble in the wild is not absurd.


Famously, ranchers and zoos helped save the American bison from extinction. California condors, black-footed ferrets, Arabian oryx, golden lion tamarins, and Mexican wolves have also been restored by captive breeding and successfully released into the wild.


The One Green Planet writer either chose to ignore this, lied, or is just incredibly ignorant.


She thought she would ‘debunk’ this irrefutable fact by pointing out one study that showed a tendency of house mice to prefer mating with fully wild mice over those captive bred in captivity for three generations.


It did not occur to the writer that captive bred animals could potentially restore populations after an extinction event or that there is a likely possibility that not all species will behave like house mice.


While I would agree that most captive animals will likely never have their genetics re-introduced into the wild, this is mostly due to lack of habitat to carry out such a task. Captive animals are seen as a ‘last resort’ and efforts to conserve animals in situ are of the most importance.

2. A Learning Experience (Lazy non-rebuttal)

“For some exotic pet enthusiasts, taking care of a dog or cat is simply not challenging enough. They enjoy the “journey” of owning an exotic animal and having the opportunity to observe its behavior. We can’t help but question what satisfaction anybody receives from knowing they’re capable of keeping a wild animal alive restricting it to an outdoor enclosure or tank."

Uh, OK, but actually, no one cares about your ignorant opinions. You can question the exotic pet owner’s satisfaction all you want, but without evidence that the animal is experiencing poor welfare, your animals-only-belong-in-the-wild religion will be fully ignored.

3. If Cats and Dogs Can be Domesticated, Why Not Exotic Animals?

“The idea here is that if a wild animal only knows human care, they will not experience their natural instincts and in a sense “be wild.” While some exotic animals will lose their ability to survive in the wild and never learn how to hunt –i.e. rendering them dependent on humans for food – they will not become “domesticated” as such. They will still maintain their natural instincts to hunt, run, mate, and well, be wild.”

Apparently this nitwit feels that all domesticated cats and dogs have lost their instinct to hunt, run, and mate.
Well, it’s clear that while they are berating exotic pet owners, the author must have never owned or seen any kind of animal in their life.

Either that, or they fail to make common sense conclusions and that’s why they shouldn’t be allowed to exhibit their ignorance on a public website. While not all dogs and cats hunt, although a significant number of them do, all animals have the mating instinct.
No, you do not get to say your dog doesn’t have this instinct if you have surgically altered their reproductive system.
I know it’s hard, but try and think rationally.

“Trying to domesticate an exotic animal would take thousands of years to accomplish and take the species entirely out of the natural ecosystem … is that something that we really want to mess with?”

No, it would not take thousands of years (and yes, I do want to mess with it). Significant changes occur in captive bred animals in as little as three generations.


How do I know this? The author’s own cited study!


“In fact, studies have shown that wild members of a species are less likely to mate with a captive member of the species”

This likely means that the captive bred mice are behaviorally different (although environmental effects could also be playing a part), indicating the potential for genetic differences.


Other studies experimenting with the ‘domestication phenotype’ have shown major shifts in genetic expression that result in changes in morphological and physiological traits. Some animals in the experiment had reduced flight response, which is essentially what domestication is all about.


So, in not an extensive length of generational breeding, animals may express genetic features that will enable them to better ‘acclimate’ to captivity.


It is not clear how far this process much go before an animal can be considered ‘domesticated’. Animals like Syrian hamsters are common pets that are not seen as ‘wild’ animals.


Clearly, the agenda-driven One Green Planet author doesn’t have brain functioning to comprehend this subject, so I won’t get further into it.


Henn needs to keep some animals and pick up a few books like I have to resolve her lack of an education.


*After finishing this post, I clicked on her name for more information

“Corrine is a graduate of Delaware Valley College with a degree in Conservation and Wildlife management.”

Someone slept through class!

Born Free: Three (Stupid) Reasons for Banning the Private Possession of Exotic Animals

Our Dippy Exotic Pet Rant of the day comes from none other than Born Free, probably one of the top zoo/pet haters. 

 

         1. Those crazy exotic animals threaten public safety!!!’

Born Free says:

“Across the country, many exotic animals privately held have escaped from their enclosures and freely roamed the community, and have attacked humans and other animals. Children and adults have been mauled by tigers, bitten by monkeys, and asphyxiated by snakes.”

Tambako The Jaguar (CC BY-ND 2.0)  Via Flickr

That’s the thing about animals; many of them come equipped with claws, teeth, and other modes of self-defense.

First, we need to talk about how silly it is that we are making generalizations about ‘exotic pets’. You might as well replace the word with ‘pets’; it makes no difference.

Many pets have escaped and freely roamed the community, and have attacked humans and other animals.

See? This sentence makes the same amount of sense. Instead of singling out an arbitrary definition of ‘exotic pets’, it includes all animals like dogs which we all are highly aware do the same exact thing. So why does no one care what the non-exotic pet does? They just don’t, that pretty much explains it.

Born Free goes on to talk about how dangerous exotic felines are and that “Adult exotic felines weigh anywhere between 300 to 500 pounds depending on the species…”, but actually Born Free, this is a factual error. You just mentioned previously an ‘ocelot’, and its adult size is 17-24 pounds. How can they make such a blatant error?

I actually conducted research spanning several months about injurious exotic cat incidences. Based on the available evidence, exotic cat attacks, both big and small, are anything but common.

Let’s just say I was able to find no more than 6 exotic cat attacks to an uninvolved (with the animal) member of the public in the last 25 years (!) I did my absolute best, and if I missed an incident or two it was not my intention, but 6 incidences is shockingly tiny. Large constrictor snakes also kill on average one human a year, if that.

So when Born Free boldly states “With so many exotic animals in private hands, these incidents are not rare”, I find it hard to believe anyone would consider the actual facts ‘not rare’. What is rare? Zero?

“By their very nature, exotic animals are dangerous creatures.”

Born Free basically just stated that a sloth is dangerous. And hamsters. And cockatiels.

There you have it, the lack of logic and basic reason with animal rights sites is blatant and absurd. And they probably don’t care, as long as they properly fear-monger you into complying with their ideology. 

         2. Scary Diseases!

“Many exotic animals are carriers of zoonotic diseases, such as Herpes B, Monkey Pox, and Salmonellosis, all of which are communicable to humans.”

It’s true, exotic pets can carry disease. Are the ‘acceptable pets’ disease threat free? No. But that doesn’t stop activists from sensationalizing this about exotic pets as though it’s some anomaly that only exists with them.

You will always hear them talk about these three diseases: Monkey Pox (prairie dogs), Salmonella (reptiles) and Herpes B (macaque monkeys).

According to the CDC, your number one source of Salmonella comes from contaminated food. It also has been linked with the keeping of backyard chickens. Chickens are domesticated, so I guess that source of infection doesn’t matter. Even dogs can carry salmonella.

Someone might say that the risk of getting Salmonella is higher in reptiles than dogs. This is true, but what is this, some kind of contest where the loser gets banned and the winner stays legal? That doesn’t make any sense.  As you might guess, dogs and cats have their own unique set of zoonotics that they might pass on to you.

Born Free ‘forgot’ to mention that the CDC says “Reported cases of infection in humans are very rare; since the identification of the virus in 1932, there have only been 31 documented human infections by B virus, 21 of which were fatal”. The last death occurred in 1997 with a researcher that worked with macaques. 

So there you have it, a serious disease but ridiculously rare.

And last but not least, monkey pox, the animal rights activist fear monger’s golden child of explaining how the exotic pet trade (event the small ones!) will end us all.

In 2003, monkey pox was reported in the United States for the first time, and the source of the infection was traced to imported Ghanaian rodents including Gambian pouched rats, tree squirrels, and dormice. Monkey pox has a case-fatality ratio of 1%-10%...in remote, medically underserved areas in Africa. 

The people in the U.S. who got the rare disease got mild symptoms.

Still, an embargo was enforced on the sale and importation of prairie dogs and numerous African rodents. We lost a lot of cool animals like jirds and jerboas because of this ban but the world did not end. While still illegal to ship these animals from Africa, captive prairie dogs are now allowed to be sold within the U.S. and all is well. 

It makes much more sense to address issues as they show up rather than to ban hundreds of animals for such a low risk of serious disease outbreaks.

Remember, Born Free doesn’t really care about these diseases or their impacts, they just hate all animal captivity and will say anything to get their way. 

      3.  It’s just cruel, all of it!

“When in the hands of private individuals, the animals themselves suffer. These animals do not adjust well to a captive environment, for they require special care, housing, diet and maintenance that the average person cannot provide.”

Again, making massive generalizations is akin to flat out lying. Anyone who says ‘exotics pets are…’ and doesn’t end that sentence with something like ‘living organisms’, ‘DNA-containing’ or ‘required to eat in order to live’ is probably either ignorant to the extremely diverse amount of species or doesn’t care about the accuracy of their statements.

 Many exotics do very well in captivity. Those that don’t are probably already unpopular pet choices for a reason. I would say that in general, the mammals and birds that do best in captivity and breed readily end up in the pet trade while the less hardy animals stay in professional zoological facilities.

  

Of course, they all require someone who knows how to care for them, no different from any other living organism.

 Even an animal as seemingly easy to care for as a goldfish is often cared for incorrectly by most people; that doesn’t mean they should be banned or that goldfish are unsuitable for captivity. 

Pet stores and bad breeders are often to blame for ignorant people getting pets they can’t, or refuse to handle properly. Many people will often get a dog and improperly care for it. Just because the dog won’t die easily doesn’t make this any better.

Many exotic pets, and most of the ones Born Free thinks they’re talking about, are not for the “average person” anyway. There are many non-average people that shouldn’t have their pets taken from them.

Born Free has tried to turn their emotional ideology into facts, but they’ve failed. Lucky for them, many legislators don’t let the truth stand in the way of their decisions.  

Sad Animals at BIG CAT RESCUE | Photo Tour!

Oh WOE IS ME. I'm trapped in a cage at BIG CAT RESCUE!

Big Cat Rescue of Tampa Florida has one of the biggest mouths of any animal 'sanctuary' that is trying to end the captivity of exotic animals in zoos, educational facilities, and private ownership. Like many other animal rights zealot-websites, they present manipulative photos of animals 'looking sad' in facilities that aren't theirs, or cherry pick photos of enclosures on rainy days so animals stroll through muddy conditions that don't appeal to modernized humans. Animals can only get wet and dirty in the wild.

Then, they amass millions of views on Youtube and Facebook likes showing off their 'happy' animals frolicking in captivity. These messages are so mixed, labradoodles envy them.

So I thought it would be amusing to collect some unflattering photos (they are licensed for free-use, so BCR can't sue me as they immediately do to any pro-pet person who uses their photos) of animals in Big Cat Rescue that some of their visitors have taken, not their expert photographer PR crew.

This is a great companion piece to my article Sad Animals in Zoos.  Scroll to the bottom for some great music for your tour!

An African Caracal stares longingly out of its "prison", pondering its highly anticipated death so it can one day truly be 'free'.

Stefanie kraus (CC BY-ND 2.0) Via Flickr

This lion wants to know what it did to deserve such a monotonous existence, being forced to pose for photos so Big Cat Rescue can rack up the dough from the exploitation.

Charles Barilleaux (CC BY 2.0) Via Flickr

Fran (CC BY-SA 2.0) Via Flickr

Tonga the white serval doesn't have a nose. Big Cat Rescue had it removed (cancer, the second picture is older) to keep the already very elderly cat from dying and freeing itself from the torture of permanent imprisonment. Look! He's so sad, he's drooling!

M.M.Meeks (CC BY-ND 2.0) Via Flickr

WHEN WILL THE EXPLOITATION END?? I just want to take a nap!

Charles Barilleaux (CC BY 2.0)  Via Flickr

'I roam HUNDREDS of miles in the wild, stalking prey in a glorious hunt, and here, I have a big doughnut on a string.'

Jimmy theSuperStar(CC BY 2.0) 

 HAAAALP!!!!

a200/a77Wells (CC BY 2.0) Via Flickr

 NOT LIKE THE WILD :(

Charles Barilleaux (CC BY 2.0) Via Flickr

Beautiful, Wild, Free, I AM NOT!

M.M.Meeks (CC BY-ND 2.0) Via Flickr

What is life like beyond the cage bars?

Jimmy theSuperStar (CC BY 2.0) Via Flickr

Charles Barilleaux (CC BY 2.0) Via Flickr

 

 

 Your soundtrack for these photos!!

 

"And I still...believe...living beautiful...*tear*...wild...and free"

Tippi Hedren and Tim Harrison make Fools out of themselves on Fellow Fool, Colin McEnroe’s Radio Show.

The Case Against Owning Exotic Pets “Doesn’t Wash”

Colin McEnroe probably thought he was in safe territory jumping on the bandwagon of anti-‘exotic’ pet sentiment with his broadcast entitled The Case Against Owning Exotic Pets. I discovered the article , written by Josh Nilaya, before the show was recorded, and it spouted the same ol’ irritating nonsense (I can name 5 incidences where an animal defined as exotic caused an injury or death, so that means they’re too dangerous!).  After leaving a comment in the article’s comment section, I noticed this statement at the bottom of the page:

Please leave comments below, email us at Colin@wnpr.org, or tweet us @wnprcolin.

“Oh great!” I thought, here’s my chance to get the other side (the rational side) of the argument out there. I thought I’d email Colin some of my irrefutable points and interesting statistics. I received this reply:

My show is live from 1 to 2 p.m. ET and streamable at WNPR.org
 our call-in line is 860-275-7266
 love to hear from your side

This was a lie, as you'll see. Unfortunately, I missed the broadcast, so I wrote back to re-iterate (politely) that my previously email contained a link that refuted what Tim Harrison was saying in the now available recording of the show [that despite the fact that there are millions of dogs and only thousands of big cats, the percentage of dog-related hospital-requiring injuries is still higher relative to their population]. 

Colin’s show contained ZERO guests that supported the opposite side. My elaborate post was basically ignored as Colin replied with nothing but a link to the article and audio I was specifically talking about. 

Irritated, I sarcastically relied “Thanks for sending me the link to the article I read three days ago.” He sarcastically replied “It now has the entire audio of the show you were asking about. You're welcome.”

I was hardly “asking about” the show, I was addressing the misinformation in the conversation that he took part in, and apparently forgot about (?). I replied “Yes, the audio that I was specifically TALKING ABOUT.”

And here was his gem of a response:

“Look, I get hundreds of emails every day and struggle to keep track of them all.
I was just trying to make sure you had the material you needed.
Maybe you need to spend a little less time with your nocturnal pet and a little more time out in the sunshine acquiring social skills.”

So there you have it. Colin McEnroe does not care about a balanced interview in the least bit. His site encourages emails, tweets, and calls, but apparently you are only acknowledged respectfully if you say the right thing, or agree with his ignorant view like a brainwashed tool. 

It is notable that he attacked me personally when I had done no such thing to him, describing my dedication for my pet as an indication that I lack social skills, a very common criticism from anti-weird pet people who don’t appreciate people who happen to have different lifestyles from their own.

It isn’t terribly surprising. Colin is a radio personality, not a thinker, and he is fully ignorant to the subject of exotic pets. He’s probably been educated about so-called wild animals from cartoons and movies.

What about Tim Harrison and Tippi Hedren? Two people who are way more experienced with dangerous exotics than I can possibly imagine?

Well, I could barely distinguish their comments from the stupid remarks of Colin.

Tippi was a privileged actor and former exotic pet owner, and Tim is also a former exotic pet owner—his past laden with many negligent offenses such as keeping a big cat cub in his basement (I’ve learned this from his own brother, Jim Harrison, the director of the Kentucky Reptile Zoo).

Colin begins his interview (after a very stupid, unfunny skit) of these two numbskulls by stating

“We are basically in favor of not having exotic pets…”

and

“There are all kinds of ways that this plays out that are not be good for the animal and maybe not good for you.”

and

“I kinda screamed when I heard Tippi Hedren was going to be on the show…”

Basically, he’s star struck by Hedren, and already has his mind made up about exotic pets even though he barely knows anything about them, perfect.

Tim says:

“I don’t want these in people’s homes for the public safety aspect of it and also for the animal’s safety too…”

and

“Chris Rock said it perfectly. He’s my big cat expert …

and

...the tiger didn’t turn on Roy, the tiger went ‘tiger’, and that was the greatest tiger show ever put on stage because that's what a tiger’s spose to do [Chris Rock said]. It’s not supposed to do magic tricks, jump through hoops…perfect house pet right? No. This is what we’re up against.”

NO ONE who advocates for exotic pet ownership advocates keeping animals in unsuitable environments like keeping a fully grown tiger in a house. I’m tired of explaining this, and I had to explain it to two people in the comment section as well. 

You can advocate horse ownership without encouraging people to keep horses inside houses, right? Also, the weak, emotional argument about what animals are ‘supposed’ to do is useless. None of our pets, domesticated or otherwise, are “supposed” to do anything.

Harrison and Hedren regularly make up specious ‘arguments’ that appeal to people’s ignorance and misconceptions about alternative pet care. While Colin keeps trying to probe more into Tippi’s interesting past with her vast collection of “working” big cats for her film Roar, Tippi seems to want to deflect that discussion to parrot out more irrational nonsense about captive animals.

 Here is a full quote regarding Roy Horn:

“Yes that tiger was really going right into instinct mode, uh, Roy had a stroke on stage, and it’s the instinctive dictate of these animals to take out, any being , animals, human, whatever, if they’re sick, old, uh, whatever. And um, poor Montecore had to say “gee sorry Roy, you’re my best buddy, you raised me fed me with a bottle and, we’ve had a lot of fun and you’ve taught me how to be so elegant up on stage but, you’re sick and I’m sorry, I have to take you out.”

I could not verify this bold claim about animal behavior anywhere. In fact, it sounds like a myth, and a stupid one at that. 

Tigers in the wild are solitary and do not have ‘buddies’ that they kill once they begin to wither. Wild tigers form large territories and want nothing to do with each other aside from breeding. Why would they risk their health killing a weaker tiger for no reason? In fact, I could only find one page addressing the claim—a non-scientific site but it made a ton of sense regardless—and they had this to say about healthy animals dispatching the dying and old:

“We’re not sure where these ideas come from. Perhaps it’s from not-too-scientific nature shows or a twisting of Darwinian ideas of natural selection. First of all, there is no known mechanism for nature to "purify the gene pool". Killing the old and the sick doesn’t have a direct benefit to the species as a whole.   In fact, animals which are healthy and robust enough to make it to old age have already made their contribution to the gene pool.   And it’s not as if the youngsters all get together and decide that killing the old will benefit everybody.”

Not to mention, if the tiger really wanted to kill Roy, without a doubt, he would be dead. I suspect Tippi is the type of person that, due to her status and influence, is never corrected regardless of how wrong she is.

Later in the conversation:

Colin: "I do want to talk about the state of laws here, I mean,… I’m guessing if I have a tiger I have an elephant, um somebody’s gonna come to my house…

“But I also assume there are a lot of things that I probably can own, that there are monkeys birds, reptiles, hedgehogs, prairie dogs, sugar gliders, things like that that I might want to own and I’m guessing, maybe I shouldn’t own them, but.. I would guess they’re also, aren’t gonna necessarily be laws that I can’t?”

Just in case you were wondering if these dunces were only discussing large and dangerous animals, they aren’t. Collin seems to think suger gliders (which he later says he DOESN’T even know what they are) , birds, reptiles, and hedgehogs are something he’s 'guessing he shouldn’t want to own', and get this, he even later says he has a clownfish.

Harrison replies that you can’t say a prairie dog isn’t dangerous because of zoonotics, something he fails to realize exists also in dogs and cats, and is rare to occur severely in both.

Colin brings up that someone will call up and say that dogs kill more people (they didn’t) or email him (I know at least one person did, but he didn’t give a damn) than exotics.

Tipi: “None of those statements wash”

Harrison: "You got maybe 10000 to 15000 cats nobody knows for sure.  You got millions of dogs. So the statistics go against what they’re saying. You need a license for a dog but you don’t need anything for a lion."

Colin: "It seems to leave a very important part out of the description anyway…"

As previously stated, I have shown that the statistics still hold up to our claims. I have yet to see any animal rights activist actually look at them. They seem to mindlessly assume that just because there are millions of dogs, that must mean that incidences from them are, percentage-wise, smaller. Not that exotic pet ownership is only OK if it is less dangerous than dog ownership. What sense would that make?

This next part of exchange is inconceivably idiotic.

Colin talks about how he used to want an ocelot as a kid because he saw one on TV.

Colin: "What would you have told my parents if they called you up as they often did and said “Collin wants an ocelot” what should we tell em, what’s the answer to that question?"

Tippi: “OK you’re dealing with an apex predator. These are top of the food chain, which means they have instincts that you cannot control and they’re..they, it’s their duty to take out any old sick lame, whatever. Or, it’s just of whim, that they have to take care of, in their own brain."

Again, she repeats the myth and enhances it into a fictional “duty” of apex predators. 

Speaking of apex predators, when I specifically search for it I can find some sites that call ocelots apex predators, but according to the definition of apex predators (no natural predators) an ocelot is not one because its natural predators include harpy eagles, anacondas, jaguars, and pumas. 

Being an apex predator also doesn’t mean ‘you can’t control it’, if that even means anything. All animals have ‘instincts’ whether they are an apex predator, herbivore or scavenger, period.

Tippi: "They don’t even like us. These animals don’t care about us. It’s we who think they’re so beautiful and so wonderful."

This just isn’t true! Big cats might accidentally kill their trainers but they are simply animals. They can care about you but be prone to accidental instinctual fits. My dog cares about me yet she growls angrily if I get too close to her food bowl because of an instinct, that yes, even dogs have!

Colin: "I got a clownfish that’s not the same as having a cheetah. Tim what’s your answer to that?"

Tim talks about lionfish being turned loose in Florida, and Chinese Carp.

Tim: "But when you talk about clownfish, I think it’s a disrespect."

"But when you have your clownfish, tell me the truth, do you think that clownfish is going to be totally happy in that aquarium for the rest of its life? Watch Finding Nemo and then make that decision."

 After Colin idiotically admits to being an exotic pet owner despite his cheerleading of Tippi’s nonsense, Tim goes on to cite a simple-minded and overrated (trust me on this) cartoon as a good source to see why clownfish shouldn’t be kept in aquariums. 

Tim also mentions Chinese carp, an invasive species intentionally introduced by farmers of catfish intended for human consumption.

In other words, Asian carp aren’t the result of any ‘pet trade’, but I guess the exotic pet trade is to blame for everything, including what it doesn’t cause. Let’s ignore the domesticated animal trade, which includes goldfish, a domesticated carp that has also invaded waterways.

And last but not least…

Colin: "Tippi do you feel the same way about some of these smaller animals I mean people get prarie dogs and hedgehogs and sugar glider, I mean, I don’t even know what a sugar glider is" (then you have no business taking a stance on this issue, ignorant idiot, this debate involves knowing some basic facts about animals including what they are).

Tippi: "On our education programs when the students come, my main statement is NOT. ONE. WILD. ANIMAL should be a pet. Whether it’s a little squirrel in your backyard or a Siberian tiger. NONE of them should be a pet. And that should just be a law, learn to respect those animals in their own environment…do NOT bring them home and put em in a cage. You’re either going to kill it, because it will die of a broken heart [WTF]..um…"

“…I don’t even approve of the zoos, I feel so sorry for those animals….”

Tippi is an idiot for sure. I challenge her to even properly define what a ‘wild animal’ is. She is against any so-called wild animal, which probably translates to ‘only dogs and cats should be pets’, irrefutably dumb logic. 

She also declares that she’s against all zoos and feels sorry for all the animals in them (does that include her own?). Tim Harrison doesn’t fully take a stance against zoos, but still is an obvious fan of Tipi and her unbelievably dense statements, saying ‘but Tippi said a beautiful thing…’.

Therefore, these two just can’t be taken seriously. Tippi and Tim have virtually no excuse for the displays of ignorance present in this interview, only the ditzy novice Colin does. Understand that when you deal with animal rights, you deal with delusions and non-facts.