Thursday, 17 October 2024
12 men capture escaped or abandoned pet caracal. Now at sanctuary.
Saturday, 25 May 2024
Can sand cats be pets? What to know about these adorable felines
Natural Habitat: Sand cats are native to deserts across parts of Africa and Asia. They prefer dry habitats with little vegetation, living in sandy, dry plains and rocky valleys. Their range includes the Sahara Desert in Algeria, Niger, and Morocco, as well as the Arabian Peninsula and parts of central Asia such as Turkmenistan, Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. They are deeply adapted to desert living not living room living (my added comment - see link above).
Legal Restrictions: Keeping a sand cat as a pet is not recommended (highly so). In the United States, 35 states have banned keeping big cats as pets. Although sand cats are smaller than cheetahs or lions, they could still fall into the “big cat” category. Additionally, they are generally considered exotic animals, which makes them off-limits for pet ownership. Only six states (Alabama, Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Delaware, and Oklahoma) do not ban or regulate having big cats as pets.
Conservation Programs: The appropriate place for a captive sand cat is within a conservation program. While sand cats are not endangered, ongoing efforts aim to conserve and protect the species. These programs ensure that sand cats can continue to thrive in their natural habitats where they should stay. Sorry.
In summary, while sand cats may be captivating, it’s best to appreciate them from a distance and support conservation efforts rather than attempting to keep them as pets.🙄🐈⬛
Tuesday, 13 July 2021
Study on pet wolf behaviour helps explain why wild cats don't make great pets
It is my contention that true wild cats like the serval don't make good pets because they are not backed up by 10,000 years of domestication. I believe that memory can be inherited. It is called genetic memory. This is why young offspring of wild animals such as wild cats or wild dogs immediately know how to do things completely instinctively. And it's why domestic cats have the memory of human behavior in their DNA.
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Zena, a pet serval, and James Brown's partner? Photo: James Brown. |
And I believe that domestic cats over thousands of years of domestication learn how to interact with people and that this memory is held in their genes to be passed on to their offspring. And the study on young wolves regarded as pets to their owners found that they could never quite pick up inferences from human behaviour as could domestic dogs. Therefore, they were unable to communicate with people in quite the same way.
Dogs are born with an innate ability to understand what humans want to communicate to them. Their ability is to read people because of perhaps 20,000 years of domestication. Dogs have been domesticated for far longer than cats because they were and still are working animals.
Because they understand people better, they form much better bonds with people than do pet wild dogs i.e. wolves. Across a range of tests in the study the dog puppies greatly outperformed their wolf cousins. For example, despite puppies, only a few weeks old, know where to find their food because the human is pointing at it whereas not one of the young wolves in the study did any better than chance. In other words, there was no background, inherited skills.
The pet wolf is a raw product without a history of interacting with human beings. Take that from the study and you get the same effect in living with exotic cats as they are called, which refers normally to the small and medium-sized wild cat species such as the serval, as mentioned, and sometimes the cheetah or even the mountain lion. I have seen people regard mountain lions as pets. They even go a step further and have lions and tigers as pets sometimes but the relationship between cat and person will never be the same as with a domestic cat.
Wild cats as pets are not able to create the same bond and understanding between themselves and their human carer as the humble domestic cat. That is not to say that bonds are formed. Some people say that exotic cats such as the F1 Savannah create strong bonds but that cat is half domestic cat.
P.S. The study referred to was carried out at the Wildlife Science Center in Stacy, Minnesota and published in the journal Current Biology.
Tuesday, 20 April 2021
Serval bites firefighter as he battles a blaze in Vancouver
VANCOUVER, WASHINGTON, USA-NEWS AND VIEWS: a firefighter was bitten by a serval while battling a blaze inside a Washington home. The serval is an exotic pet for some people. It is a large cat. They are the size of a large dog. They are a wild animal and although exotic in appearance they make unsuitable companion animals in my honest opinion. This is borne out by the fact that many servals are abandoned to shelters or they escape their homes and our not infrequently killed outside the home.
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Serval playing with a white rabbit at A1 Savannahs in Ponca City, OK, USA. Photo: Kathryn Stucki. |
Around 2:40 PM last Sunday a fire crew from Clark County Fire District 6 together with the Vancouver Fire Department attended a house fire. As usual, they worked to extinguish the flames which spread, it is reported by The News Tribune, to the attic.
Some of the firefighters went through the home looking for any companion animals or people to make sure that all was clear.
One firefighter encountered the serval. He was bitten on his hand by the cat. The bite went through his glove and injured his finger. Comment: it appears that the firefighter was trying to rescue the cat from the building. In other words the firefighter probably tried to pick up or lead the cat out of the home. That was never going to work without a struggle but the firefighter perhaps would not be aware of that difficulty.
Accordingly, they called animal control who were able to effectively take charge and take the cat to a suitable facility. The cat was unharmed. The serval is not listed as prohibited under local legal provisions. It is not listed as a potentially dangerous wild animal under state law. You may know that the male serval is the parent of the F1 Savannah cat.
The firefighter was treated at a local hospital for his bite and returned to work today. The serval has been returned to its owner. It is reported that the owner agreed to make arrangements to make sure that it can't bite anyone else! Comment: if another fire occurs or some other emergency then there is no guaranteeing that the serval won't bite somebody. It's impractical to state anything else. The cat will become fearful and aggressively defensive under these sorts of circumstances. That is entirely normal and to be expected.
The story highlights, in my view, the unsuitability of keeping servals as pets in America. There are some people in the UK, as well, to keep them as pets. But once you have been near one of these cats, as I have, you quickly realise that they are quite intimidating especially the males who are bigger than the females.
You would not want one in your home unless you are in enamoured with the concept of living with an exotic wild creature. In which case you might put to one side the downsides such as being injured or having to deal with urine scent marking within the home. In addition there is always the possibility that they might escape.
Being confined to a typical home is highly unsuitable for a serval who needs around 10 km² or more as their home range in the wild. There will be an endless desire for this animal to seek more space. That's going to be a constant worry for a concerned owner.
Tuesday, 2 March 2021
Pet bobcats instinctively like to use human toilet to poop and pee
This is a story from Melissa, Texas, USA of a couple of pet bobcats adopted quite recently by Mick and Melissa. They have made a video of their experiences of living with the bobcats. Melisssa says that bobcats like to hide the smell of their feces and urine when living in the wild. They do this by using a pond or a stream. This is why they took to using the human toilet so naturally.
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Melissa play-fights with one of the bobcats. Watch those hands. A bobcat bite can break the bones of the hands according to Melissa. Screenshot. |
My research indicates that bobcats don't normally hide their feces in the wild. In fact they create a bobcat feces toilet! I visualise mounds of poo at an important place in their home range. They tend to mark territory at the boundaries of their home range using poop, pee and scraping the ground. This contradicts Melissa but I sure that she is correct in saying that the bobcats used the toilet naturally.
So what is going on? It seems that they want to hide the smell of their poop. Sometimes in the wild bobcats need to be invisible. Perhaps it might be a female with her cubs. Or a juvenile bobcat. My reading of the situation is that Melissa and Mick's bobcats are feeling a little anxious and don't feel confident enough to mark territory.
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Pet bobcat instinctively pees and poops in human toilet the owner said. Screenshot. |
They probably don't feel that it is their territory but the territory of their owners. Perhaps as they become more bold and older their toilet habits might change.
Melissa does not say if the bobcats have sprayed urine against the walls as is commonplace in captive medium-sized wild cat pets. The serval is another example.
There are many cases of serval owners giving up and abandoning their exotic pets to sanctuaries because it all becomes to much hassle.
Bobcats can live long lives at about 30 years in captivity. They are the longest lived wild cat species in captivity. If Melissa and Mick are around 40 years old they'll be looking after these gorgeous bobcats when they are approaching 70. Can they do it? Will they tire of it or will their circumstances change so that they can no longer care for the cats?
Melissa admits to getting scratched and even suffering from broken bones in her hands because the bite of these cats is very strong. Not many people are able to accept that. Some delcaw their exotic pet cats. I can't tell if these bobcats are declawed. I don't think they are and I sincerely hope not. It is a very cruel operation.
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Bobcat peeing and pooping in a human toilet. Screenshot. |
As you can see, I am against wild cats as pets because ultimately it works against conservation of these animals. So much better to let them live out their lives naturally in the wild and allow them the space and peace to do it.
Saturday, 20 February 2021
You need a license to keep a serval in the UK
I have just written about a young, one-year-old serval being taken away by the police from a man who was looking after her in Putney, London, UK. He didn't have a licence but he claimed that he was applying for one. He also claims that he wasn't trying to evade the requirement to have a licence. He is distraught because this serval, called Zena, was in a close friendship with his daughter. The man's name is James Brown. He appears to live with a female partner in a house but it might be a ground floor flat.
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Zena a one year old pet serval who was confiscated from her owner because he did not have a licence (UK law for certain wild cat species). Photo: James Brown. |
He says the cat is friendly and there were no problems. Although he adopted Zena from another person who gave her up because he hadn't realised how difficult it was to look after a serval. This proves my point made in a recent article I wrote on this website about the unsuitability of looking after a serval or any other wild cat species as a pet. In the UK some wild cat species require a licence in order to keep them and others don't. Personally I don't see the logic in the list which I have reproduced below. See below:
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Law on keeping exotic wild cat species as pets - license required for some species. |
Zena will be checked out medically and then relocated to a wildlife sanctuary for what appears to be the remainder of her life. James Brown will not see her again, I suspect. He has petitioned online to get her back but so far without success.
A neighbour ratted on him because they saw zena in the window looking out the window as cats do. It was a bit of cat television for the serval and a bit of anguish for the serval's owner. In the UK you apply for a licence from the local authority. In James Brown's case that would have been Wandsworth County Council.
I suspect that it isn't a pushover to get a licence because you will have to demonstrate that you have the means, time, education, skills, commitment and facilities to do a decent job of it. Not everybody can demonstrate that. You have to go into adopting and looking after a wild cat as a pet with your eyes wide open both to the commitment required and the legal requirements.
In this instance the man failed because he didn't go into it with enough preparation and knowledge. Although, as he claims, there appears to have been no real issues but we don't know the full story. As I mentioned in my previous article it can be difficult to look after a serval in the home. They sometimes spray urine which is very distressing and the amount of spaces well below that required emotionally for a serval (they need up to 10 square kilometres). This results in them trying to escape and not infrequently they succeed because they are very slippery and difficult to confine.
Once they get out of the home they are incredibly vulnerable to being hit by vehicles on the road or being injured by people. This last point particularly applies in America where there are a plethora of handguns and rifles inside homes. There have been cases of escaped servals being shot because the neighbours fear that they are dangerous and see them as an escaped wild animal perhaps from a zoo or something like that.
Tuesday, 19 January 2021
Exotic pet insurance - UK - discussion
UNITED KINGDOM: ExoticDirect is BOUGHTBYMANY's sister insurer and they are said to be specialists in exotic pet insurance. They been going for 20 years or more and they get a decent 4.1 out of 5 stars on their Facebook page. BOUGHTBYMANY bought the parent company of ExoticDirect in 2015 which is why they are in this stable of insurance companies.
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F1 Savannah cats except for the cat on the right! These are exotic pets as far as I am concerned. Photo: PoC. |
Exotic Pet?
There is a discussion about what is an exotic pet and I can understand that. Technically it seems to mean in non-native species to the UK. In which case it would include rabbits because they've been wild in the UK since the 12th century but are non-native as I understand it. The issue with this definition is that I wonder how far back you have to go before you describe an animal as non-native. The other side of the coin to non-native is 'invasive species'.
I'm not sure that this is a good definition. I think we should take an ordinary dictionary definition of the word 'exotic' and decide that exotic pets are companion animals which are outside of the mainstream and which are not normally considered to be pets. In the world of cats, for example you might include the wild cat hybrids such as the F1 Savannah cat (see above) or the F1 Bengal cat. You might even include, in that vein, the wild cat component of these animals such as the serval and the Asiatic leopard cat. These are all exotic as would be a big cat or any other medium-sized wild cat species if they are kept as pets.
As for dogs, I would include hybrid wolves and wolves themselves as exotic. And of course you have to include birds and reptiles such as dragons et cetera. And it appears that snakes are quite popular amongst a segment of society in the UK and elsewhere. There is certainly a fascination with reptiles. Even large spiders I guess are in this bracket of animal. These are my personal views and I would think that the description of exotic pet is quite elastic. In short they will be non-typical animals.
You will have to make sure that you are allowed to own exotic animals as pets. You'll almost certainly need a license to do so and have facilities. Check with the local authority.
Insurance companies and what they cover
Another recommended company is E&L pet insurance. They appear to cover bird insurance and they get a good rating online in reviews. A third recommended company would be Cliverton Exotic Pet Insurance. This is a specialist company which is been around for more than 40 years. They insure dog walkers, wildlife rescues, falconry centres and farms. They appear to be more into businesses than individuals who want exotic pet insurance.
Exotic pet insurance by ExoticDirect covers veterinary bills, and for tortoises, parrots, birds of prey and large mammals they cover death as a result of an accident or illness, death by fire and extreme weather conditions. ExoticDirect does not cover the death of small birds and small mammals under these circumstances.
Cliverton offers public liability insurance but not insurance for veterinary costs. E&L's Bird Insurance covers veterinary bills as well as death by accident or illness. They also cover aviaries. It would be important that exotic pet insurance covers theft since they are exotic animals and therefore I would have thought liable to theft. ExoticDirect covers birds of prey, parrots, tortoises, reptiles and large mammals against theft but not small mammals or small birds.
Public liability insurance is important
Public liability is important because some of these exotic animals are dangerous. For example, there have been many servals escaping their homes. This is quite typical because this animal needs a large range in which to live and they are confined when they are regarded as pets. When they escape the home they present a danger or a perceived danger to the public. ExoticDirect provided policy for public liability for animals kept on private land and in case they escape. They also cover animal shows and displays and events, animal clubs and centres and animals included in the Dangerous Wild Animals Act. For example, if you have an exotic bird and they fly away and become lost and don't return then ExoticDirect pay out "some money" for replacement. You can arrange this insurance over the phone but it cannot be bought online.
Costs?
Of course the cost varies depending upon all the factors including the animal insured. You can take out a vet fees only policy with ExoticDirect. As an example, for small mammals under this sort of policy you would pay 10 monthly instalments of £15.10 p for £2000 of veterinary fees. Please visit their website or phone for details. Providing a list here is unwise.
Worth it?
As to whether it is worth it to take out exotic pet insurance, this is obviously a personal choice. Insurance brings peace of mind. My personal choice would be to run your own self-insurance program by saving money for a rainy day. It's about risk and reward and whether you are risk-averse or prepared to take some risks in life. Perhaps a big factor would be public liability insurance. If an animal has a potential to cause serious injury to a person if it escapes then it would seem very sensible to take out exotic pet insurance because the cost of compensating somebody under these circumstances would or might be exorbitant and beyond the normal budget of an average person.
Thursday, 24 July 2014
Pallas Cat Domestic Ownership California
Without going into lots of detail as to why it is inappropriate to keep a Pallas Cat as a pet in California, suffice to say that the keeping of a wild animal by individual person is banned in California.
There is one qualification. If the person owned the animal in question before in 1992 they are allowed to keep the animal until I presume the animal dies. In 2014 that would not be applicable to any wild cat species because none of them live beyond an absolute maximum of around 20 years.
Most often small wild cat species in captivity die relatively young because they are unsuited to that sort of lifestyle. Private zoos and public zoos have great difficulty in maintaining their stock for this reason.
The Pallas Cat is very cute looking and quite a few people think about having one of them as a pet but it won't work and it is not good for the cat. Even wild cat species known to be quite amenable to being domesticated are a handful and will challenge even the most dedicated exotic pet owner.
Below is a map from the excellent Born Free USA website which provided information about the banning or otherwise of exotic pets on a state-by-state basis:
Sunday, 25 May 2014
Russia: Woman took a nine-month lioness on a train as a domestic cat.
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Young lioness |
Anyway she couldn't cope because the lioness became too playful! I wonder what the other passengers thought?
The lioness weighs 50 kg and the transport police say that the cat was not muzzled. It is the first time that I have heard of a lioness being muzzled and treated as a domestic cat on a train.
The Transport Department of the Interior Ministry sedated the lion and the lion was handed over to an experienced person to look after her.
I'm not sure how the whole bizarre episode panned out. No doubt some railway employees will be hauled up in front of the boss to explain themselves and I hope very much that this lady gets her lioness back.
We all know that some Americans like exotic animals and particularly exotic cats including big cats which they sometimes keep as pets. This is the first time I've heard a Russian lady doing the same thing and taking it to an extreme by travelling on a train with her pet domestic cat! Her lioness was registered as a domestic cat.
The story comes from Pravda online. The photograph comes from the online article as well. I don't have the name of the photographer unfortunately.
Thursday, 8 May 2008
Exotic Cats and Wild Cats
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F1 Savannah - an exotic pet. Photo: Kathryn Stucki. |
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