Meanwhile, In Ohio...

[CharlieGiteau]

Dude got killed by his exotic animals and they escaped; it's been all over the news here in my town...the result...

So now the question is this...

Do you allow people to own exotic animals? Why?

[Rob]

This looks like a round of Big Game Hunter.

[nugz`]

Dude got killed by his exotic animals and they escaped; it's been all over the news here in my town...the result...

So now the question is this...

Do you allow people to own exotic animals? Why?

if you are talking about the same story i think you are, he let the animals go before he shot himself.

[CharlieGiteau]

if you are talking about the same story i think you are, he let the animals go before he shot himself.

You are correct, I haven't kept myself updated on the story, just when they first reported it. Then I saw this photo browsing my local news station. I found it to be quite sad myself.

[acetamino]

the only thing sad about this is the exotic animal laws and regulations that Ohio has in place. People can point fingers at the police for reacting the way they did or the man being suicidal, but Ohio and other states should not be allowing this type of exotic game ownership. Thats the bottom line.

end thread.

[ceebz]

looks like my backyard man..

[tr4gik]

more like my living room floor

[seanality]

I am pretty sure my russian girl friend has half of these in our walk-in closet.

[james-]

Why not be allowed to own these animals if you have them registered and have a well based knowledge of their needs, and a proper environment for them to flourish?

Private zoos are not rare, they just get blasted when things like this happen. A guy who lives on a ranch about 5 miles from me had an amazing "secret" collection going on, until he could no longer take care of them and donated them to a public zoo.

The way animals act is based on their upbringing, if you raise a dog or cat poorly, they can be dangerous animals too.

[youtube]igQRWZJklIo[/youtube]

[CharlieGiteau]

Why not be allowed to own these animals if you have them registered and have a well based knowledge of their needs, and a proper environment for them to flourish?

Private zoos are not rare, they just get blasted when things like this happen. A guy who lives on a ranch about 5 miles from me had an amazing "secret" collection going on, until he could no longer take care of them and donated them to a public zoo.

The way animals act is based on their upbringing, if you raise a dog or cat poorly, they can be dangerous animals too.

That's the thing though, domesticated animals and wild animals are two different things. I honestly hate going to the zoo sometimes. The animals look as depressed as circus animals, even though they're more than likely treated very well. On the other hand, I can't stand to see dogs chained up outside and not in the home with their adopted "pack".

I honestly don't see any exotic animal being able to flourish unless in some huge reserve in their native climates and areas.

I definitely agree with you on the upbringing of animals; but wild animals have that predatory instinct that's more dangerous to people than domestic dogs and cats.

Either way, it sucks to see what happened. They were the only innocent party in the whole fiasco.

[james-]

Domesticated animals and wild animals are actually pretty similar. Lets say you have a stable of horses that you have bred based off their good nature with humans like many breeders do. If you are to take one of the foals and release them to the wild they will simply revert back to their feral nature and fend for themselves. Granted, they may struggle at first, but animals don't lose their natural survival instinct because a human is hand feeding them.

Alas, you can't take a fully grown animal out of the wild (regardless of species) and expect it to have the behavioral structure of the same species that has spent its life in captivity.

This is why animals that are being bred for the purposes of being domesticated animals (for whatever reason) are picked based off of qualities such as, friendliness, aggressiveness, feeding habits, and territorial instincts. They never lose their original instincts, but rather acknowledge their subservience to the party who has helped raise them.

I'm not by any means saying that it's safe to have these pets, and I certainly don't think that people should be taking them out of their natural habitats to show as symbols of wealth.
What I am trying to get at is this; there isn't a single animal that came domesticated right out of the box. Man has been domesticating dog for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years.

Again, I'm not trying to start an argument. I'm just an animal person, and I hate to see shit like this happen to them.

/end2amlackofsleeprant

[unpro]

theres a reason breeding systems designed for reintroduction into wildlife are vastly different than zoo systems designed for keeping animals in human contact. animals that are raised by humans(especially hunting animals) did not learn the needed skills to become self sufficient in captivity normally. you cant just raise a cheetah cub, and then throw it back into the sahara, it will die. it never learned how to hunt or the dangers of its environment.

horses have been domesticated for thousands of years, even wild horses are actually very capable of being broken for human use without waiting for the next generation of breeding. dogs are similar, we bred them out of more violent animals over thousands of years, and even now there are still certain breeds whos aggressive nature and territorial behavior is a problem in some aspects of society. dogs of similar breeds will pack up. in the wild, the larger dogs will simply eat the smaller ones. small dogs(the toy dogs of today and similar) are virtually useless outside of human desire. they have no chance at all to survive in the wilds without human interference. large birds of prey would probably appreciate roaming bands of shih tzus running around though.

coyotes eat those little fuckers all the time out here.

[mg_]

Fuck everything about this.