Persuasive Smore
Should people be allowed to keep exotic animals?
Should wild animals be kept as pets?
Claim
When you have tragedies like the Zainsville, Ohio farm were 56 exotic animals are released to a rural area by Columbus, Ohio and the County's Sheriff Department had to get rid of 50 of the exotic animals out of fear of public safety, you should not be allowed to care for exotic animals.
5 reasons that support my claim:
1. Public Safety
Across the country, many exotic animals privately held have escaped and freely roamed the community, and have attacked humans and other animals. Numerous children and adults have been mauled by tigers, bitten by monkeys, and asphyxiated by snakes.
According to Livescience.com there are over 1610 incidents reported involving exotic pets and 75 of those are deaths.
Let us hope this isn't the new trend, were we start walking our tigers instead of walking our apple head chihuahua!
2. Public Health
Many exotic animals are carriers of zoonotic diseases, such as Herpes B, Monkey Pox, and Salmonellosis (people infected with Salmonella develop diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps 12 to 72 hours after infection), all of which are communicable to humans according to the centers of disease control and prevention.
3. Animal Cruelty
These animals do not adjust well to a captive environment because they require special care, housing, diet and maintenance that the average person cannot provide. Many owners then realize they can no longer care for an exotic “pet” so they turn to zoos or sanctuaries to take over the responsibility, but all the zoos and institutions could not possibly accommodate the number of unwanted exotic “pets.” When people cannot find a home for these animals they are euthanized, abandoned, or doomed to live in horrible conditions.
4. Irresponsible Release
Exotic pets are simply released by their owners we can only imagine that this is a desperate attempt to let the owners get away from any responsibility for the animal while maintaining the delusion that they’ll be better off in the “wild.” The problem is that the their “wild” typically means a residential neighborhood or city in the U.S.
5. Taking them from the wild can endanger the species.
Parrots are the world's most endangered family of birds. The international pet trade and the enormous global demand for exotic pets and trade of millions of birds, mammals and reptiles annually is the reason of which most of the exotic animals die while being captured or transported.