• dustyData@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    My nephew has snails. He smuggled them out of the schoolyard in his hoodie after the teachers caught him the first time and confiscated them. My sister found them and had to take them to a pet store to make sure they weren’t dangerous. Now they sit in a nice terrarium and it turns out the hardest part is keeping the humidity up.

  • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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    16 days ago

    Met a couple with a pet raccoon, on a leash and everything. I asked them how it was, since my wife had fantasized about a pet raccoon. They described it as a “little mischief goblin”.

    • garbagebagel@lemmy.world
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      16 days ago

      Omg my dream. We used to have some visit us at my old work and we would feed them grapes and give them a lil bowl to wash their grapes in. They were the cutest.

  • Boomer Humor Doomergod@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    I worked with someone who lived in South Africa who nursed a couple wild finches back to health. The finches got better but never flew away, and lived in the house. They’d sit on her shoulders during zoom meetings.

  • chaosCruiser@futurology.today
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    16 days ago

    I’ve seen someone walking a pig in the forest. Yes, a large pink hairless pig. It was almost like walking a dog, but this animal was quite a bit larger than most dogs.

  • ieatpwns@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    I knew someone who dealt in exotic animals and they came to work with a baby caiman alligator in a Tupperware because they were selling it after work

    • burgersc12@mander.xyz
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      9 days ago
      1. caiman
      2. alligator

      These are two different species. While caiman are part of the Alligatoridae family, they are not alligators apparently.

      Caimans are distinguished from alligators…

      Source:Wikipedia

      • Wolf314159@startrek.website
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        10 days ago

        Alligator is the common name for the family and also the common name of a few specific species. It’s kind of like how all tortoises are turtles, but not all turtles are tortoises. All caiman are alligators, but not all alligators are caimans.

        • burgersc12@mander.xyz
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          9 days ago

          From Wikipedia

          Caiman is an alligatorid belonging to the subfamily Caimaninae, one of two primary lineages within the Alligatoridae family, the other being alligators

          Alligatorinae is a subfamily within the family Alligatoridae that contains the alligators and their closest extinct relatives, and is the sister taxon to Caimaninae

          Alligators and caimans split about 53-65 million years ago

          Alligatoridae contains eight living species: two alligators within Alligatorinae, and the six caimans of Caimaninae

          The true alligators are today represented by two species

          …the subfamily Caimaninae, which differ from the alligator…

          Technically they are Alligatoridae, but when people refer to “Alligators” they mean the Genus: Alligatorinae. This would be like saying that the Caimans and Alligators are both Crocodiles because they come from the Order: Crocodilia.

          • Wolf314159@startrek.website
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            9 days ago

            I understand that common names getting mixed use in families, genus, and species can be confusing, but you’re being willfully obtuse here just to double down on useless pedantry.

            • burgersc12@mander.xyz
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              9 days ago

              Not my fault it says “Alligator and Caiman” not Alligators including Caiman. I’m just a guy reading Wikipedia.

  • garbagebagel@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    This isn’t that exotic I guess but I had a customer at the restaurant that would smuggle in his pet rat (I worked the graveyard so usually nobody was around). Its name was Gizmo and it would sit on his shoulder under his sweater and he would feed it French toast. Sweetest little thing.

  • GingaNinga@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    I’m friends with one guy who’s got an axolotl and another who’s got one of those African grey parrots. Both really cool animals. Also knew a kid back in school that had a pet squirrel.

  • TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works
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    16 days ago

    saw someone with a big ass snake.

    Also, I owned a hedgehog once, dude had some serious trauma from his 5 previous owners. Yeah, 5.
    He was always angry, but I still played with him anyways trying to get him to warm up to people. Never did, but he did like exploring all the books and crannies of the room. Wish I could’ve had him before all his previous owners :(

  • miss_demeanour@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    16 days ago

    When I was a kid, 7-8 years old kinda thing, there was an older guy (maybe 13) who had a pet hawk.
    He’d walk around the neighbourhood with the hawk perched on his leather-bound wrist, chained somehow.
    That’s all I recall; don’t know who, what, or how. Saw it 3 or 4 times over the course of a year or two…

  • QuarterSwede@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    Half dog, half wolf hybrid. That thing made a Great Dane look small. I mean, his head was slightly lower than mine at 5’8”. I could’ve easily ridden him. Beautiful animal. Wish I had a picture.

  • Sequentialsilence@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    My aunt worked as a zoo vet, and was one of the people animal control would call if they found an exotic animal and didn’t know what to do with it. As a result I grew up being able to casually play with several different species of monkeys, as well as an asshole African grey parrot. When I was in high school she even fostered a serval cat for a short time till they could find a more permanent facility.

    • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.eeOPM
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      16 days ago

      Rule of thumb in my opinion, if you have to perform body modification on an animal, it doesn’t sound like it was ever worth keeping. Clipping bird wings, deforming monkey thumbs, declawing cats, etc. make me cringe bad.

      • FelixCress@lemmy.world
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        16 days ago

        Why the fuck would anyone declaw a cat??? Or the thing with a monkey?

        But I don’t entirely agree with you - with some pets you need to cut their balls.

        • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.eeOPM
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          16 days ago

          People sadly do all those things. People declaw cats because cat claws can get sharp enough to get into fabric, and the people who declaw their cats either don’t realize cat claws are a part of their fingers or don’t care. People dethumb monkeys because it hinders their ability to weaponize their surroundings, again because all they seem to care about is showing off their pet.

          Personally, I would caution against pet castration/neutering/spaying even though it’s not up there with the other things. When it comes to this, you’re just trading some problems for other problems, and it still says a bit about the act of owning them.

          • FelixCress@lemmy.world
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            16 days ago

            I would caution against pet castration/neutering/spaying even though it’s not up there with the other things. When it comes to this, you’re just trading some problems for other problems, and it still says a bit about the act of owning them.

            Castration is pretty much a necessity for some pets. Unless you want your house to stink like a crossover between a zoo and a public toilet.

            • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.eeOPM
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              16 days ago

              I mean when it’s unnecessary. In many pets it is necessary, but many people do it just because it’s the norm.

              When it comes to odor though? I’d cope.

        • remon@ani.social
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          16 days ago

          I’m sorry, this makes no sense.

          Spiders bite, inject venom and feed through their fangs (Chelicerae). If you remove them the spider won’t be able to bite and more importantly, eat, anymore. So you can’t keep a defanged spider for very long …

    • remon@ani.social
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      16 days ago

      I’m sorry, but the asshole here is your friend. First of all, “defanging” a spider will just kill the spider, slowly (see comment below).

      And while they certainly aren’t for everybody, they actually are excellent pets if you know what you’re doing. Hell, I’ve kept a dozen Pterinochilus murinus, which are indeed assholes, still never got bitten.

      People shouldn’t keep pets if they don’t know how to care for them.

  • Count Regal Inkwell@pawb.social
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    16 days ago

    My bestie has an iguana. Not that exotic in the grand scheme of things, even if pretty cool.

    So I’m also internet acquainted with a guy that cares for tiger cubs. Except the big kitties aren’t his, he just works at a zoo.

  • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    There’s a guy on Instagram who has two absolutely massive pythons, like 16 feet long and thick as tires. They drape themselves across his young daughter very casually, and she spends time playing Barbies with the big one. The owner is very educated about snakes and obviously takes very good care of them, and isn’t some trash person who just wants violent animals, but much like pit bulls all it takes is one wrong turn and that child could die in a terrible way. I know some pet snakes are very docile, but something that could take it into its head to strangle me for dinner is not a pet to me.

    People’s pit bull apologia is bad enough, we had a person in my ER one night who had been walking their friend’s pit bull who they walked often, who yanked the leash when he saw another dog, and when they tried to grip it the dog turned around and began mauling them, and ripped their arm right off. Someone called 911 and the cops showed up and had to shoot the dog and kill it to get it off them, and they took both them and the arm to our hospital but couldn’t save it. My niece is also missing part of her lip because of a pit bull. Those are exotic animals that are extremely dangerous to me, fuck that nanny dog bullshit.

    • Enkrod@feddit.org
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      15 days ago

      More importantly, with a pitbull it’s mostly about training and handling. But snakes - even the intelligent ones - are very different from dogs. They are way more controlled by instinct and are natural predators of monkeys and young great apes. They are not intelligent in the same way mammals are, their internal machinery can at any point in time simply click with the wrong situation and that toddler is gone.

      • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
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        15 days ago

        They do look benign and just curious with the child, I won’t be unfair, and he’s really well versed in their care. I don’t want to make him sound bad or anything, he’s really a nice guy and I’ve asked him some questions he has good answers for. But who wants to run that risk? Those kids in Nova Scotia who died because a pet python escaped its enclosure and climbed into the air vent, fell through the ceiling because it was 100 pounds,and reacted to the screaming kids it fell on top of? That’s terrifying.