So I got blocked by someone on Facebook for the *checks tallies* 6 hundredth and...22nd time...this year 😁...on a page called Zookeeper Memes for Critically Endangered Teens, a page that is inexplicably followed by a few exotic pet-owning people on my friends list.
Why? I got pretty damn triggered by this hideous comment:
That was in response to this semi-intelligent comment:
Yet, these clueless zoo groupies gave me a lecture that made it sound as though they were ready to show up Davion Irvin and liberate zoo animals, aka suffering inmates, from their prison cells.
"Yeah no that’s not how this works. Dogs and cats are domestic, bred over hundreds of thousands of years for the expressed purpose of existing alongside humans."
Since this dude said "expressed purpose", I imagine he believes dogs and cats were artificially selected for thousands of years. Honey...bless your heart...no. Not even close.
Try 200 years. Before this, dogs were largely free-roaming and free-breeding synanthropes. And guess what, most dogs and cats in the world are still free-roaming and free-breeding. It was not until the Victorian era that most modern breeds were conceptualized.
But surely you recall that the Russian Farm Fox Experiment saw "domestication" changes in as little as 6 generations (this amounts to SIX YEARS).
Oh and uh, guess what? Many zoo animals (and exotic pets) have been selectively bred longer than some dogs.
In fact, zoo animals are undergoing domestication (genetic adaptation to captivity) to the point that it jeopardizes their reintroduction to the wild:
Morphological changes to black-footed ferrets (Mustela nigripes) resulting from captivity
Changes in canid cranial morphology induced by captivity and conservation implications (2021)
The phenotypic costs of captivity. (2022)
Genetic adaptation to captivity in species conservation programs (2008)
...and for the crescendo
Dilemmas for Natural Living Concepts of Zoo Animal Welfare:
Zoos indeed strive to keep their wild animals as “undomesticated” as possible [12]. This, however, may be an unattainable ideal, due to unintended and unavoidable genetic and epigenetic drifts favouring adaptations for life in a captive environment, despite our best efforts to otherwise prevent this from occurring. Indeed, in a human-animal interaction review chapter, Hemsworth et al. [18] write about the possibility of unintended domestication in zoos, citing research such as Price [47,48]—“While zoo animals are generally not considered to be domestic animals, domestication can obviously occur with wild animals kept and bred in captivity, such as zoos, but the extent of the domestication process will depend on the rate of artificial selection”
Just a lil' taste of the science I've compiled that shows so-called "wild" captive animals are in fact domesticated 😲
Their welfare requirements are harder, their behaviors have not adapted alongside people over generations, and they can plain and simple be dangerous.
Exotic pets have the same exact requirements as dogs and cats, described as the "5 freedoms."
Sure, you need to alter things depending on the species like, instead of taking a pet on a walk as you would a dog, you give them a damn box with treats to open, just like zookeepers do to keep animals entertained.
I mean, is that so hard?
Zoo people really think we are fucking idiots.
Your job is not mentally demanding, I hate to break it to y'all. We can provide "enrichment" too.
We have boxes, perfume bottles, and treat dispensing toys.
I literally throw my armadillo's food in a damn snuffle mat and he's good for hours.
No animal deserves to be in the hands of someone who cannot provide all the care requirements and that’s not just food and water, that’s full enclosures, medical care, enrichment, etc. that someone who just wants a monkey because they’re cute aren’t going to care about.
Nooooo shit. There are people who shouldn't have dogs, people who can't care for cats, and certainly people who shouldn't have children. Yet you sure as hell don't run around proclaiming it is wrong to care for these species. If someone says "I want a dog", you say "oooh what kind? I like terriers."
When someone says they want a want a wallaby, you say:
"WAAAAAAAAAGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH NOOOOOURRRRR DATS WROOOONG!!"
Instead of just fucking telling them what care an animal requires.
You and your clickbait YouTube videos about how cougars can be pets are quite literally just continuing the dangerous mindset that wild animals are pets. This hurts people, animals, and especially wild populations as the demand climbs the people wanting to make money find completely unethical ways to get it, being capturing them or breeding them unethically.
Do you have even the slightest clue of how hard it is to get views on Youtube? Like, damn, cut me some slack. They have attention-grabbing thumbnails to try and entice people to listen to my horrible voice drone on about science but they are not clickbait. All the titles are accurate.
I did research for that cougar video and found out things even I wasn't aware of. I originally felt that cougars were inherently dangerous and would therefore be horrible pets, but the truth is more complex.
Oh and trust me, no one's running out to capture cougars for the pet trade. That simply doesn't happen.
Look at Harry Potter with owls, Game of Thrones with huskies and wolf dogs, Finding Nemo with clownfish and tangs. History has shown us that people that “just want exotic pets” are incapable of caring for them.
Dude, that shit about the owls is a myth (there may have been a rise in Asian countries but this also coincided with social media). Try READING. Stop swallowing the crap people are spoon-feeding you. Not to mention, you have no idea who is capable of caring for what. Let's just educate people on how to do so instead of condemning exotic pet ownership.
They belong in the hands of professionals at facilities that can care for them, and even then, a large chunk of zoos can’t even do that. You can be horridly offended that someone is condemning you for your ignorant and straight up idiotic viewpoints, but the fact of the matter is, you cuddling a springhaas is not the amazing gotcha you thought it was.
So I had words attached to that picture of my springhare, that was the "gotcha" part. I just posted the picture to rub my exotic pet in someone's face because they want me to be "jealous" of them and I say to that, bite me. He's well cared for and he's none of your business. It's not your business what animals I buy. NOT your business!
I'm still trying to wrap my head around why people think they can tell other people what pets to keep. It really isn't a big deal.
You’re right, nobody can stop you from keeping your exotic pets, but I can definitely keep you from spreading your dangerous misinformation on my page!
Then he blocked me. Of course. I can at least commend him for not typing in the 'last word' to feel like he 'won'. People who do that are shit that's been stepped on by an animal and tracked around the cage. But he did erase my comments after leaving a "laughing" face:
.
I will revive my last comment here:
Ok look, I get it. Ooo look at those nasty unqualified private owners, they're so horrible, we're so superior and professional. If only they would stop buying pets, all would be well, and the animal rights nuts would leave us alone.
You're fucking yourselves.
They're not going to leave you alone. When they're done with us, they will..no...they ARE...coming for all of you and your precious zoos. Your jobs. Your livelihoods.
When you support this idea that some animals are too 'special' to be pets, the public is listening. They will eventually determine that not only should they not be pets, they don't belong in any cages (especially when they get a load of some of that research I posted no less)!
They are, after all, special. They'll decide that Carole Baskin should have all your cats and you'll get holograms as replacements. They'll fire your asses and hire a CGI guy.
If you keep supporting the mythological domesticated/non-domesticated binary falsehood, it's going to bite you in the ass for sure. It likely already has.
