Should Wild Animals Be Kept As Pets

By: Terry Messmer, Utah Country Academy Extension wildlife specialist, terry.messmer@usu.edu fox

A woman in New York paid $one,800 for a nine-calendar week-old black leopard. She thought it was beautiful and friendly – until it attacked her.

A Pennsylvania adult female died after being attacked by her "pet," a 350-pound black bear she had raised since it was a cub.

A red fox pup was turned into a shelter by a family that had kept it in captivity. The fox became bullheaded because it was not being fed properly.

These are examples of people who attempted to make pets out of wildlife, and the unfortunate situations are not isolated.

Besides the harm that could occur to wild animals kept in homes, keeping wild fauna as pets poses corking danger to humans. Born Complimentary United states, a nonprofit advancement organization that strives to end the buying of wild animals, has documented over 1,500 attacks, including 75 human deaths involving wildlife pets since 1990.

In near states, individual ownership of wild fauna is illegal. These laws exist because wild animals have special needs, and information technology is hard to go along them healthy and alive in captivity. Proper nutrition is essential for normal development, and any deficiencies may cost the animal its life.

Unlike domesticated cats and dogs, keeping a wild animal in a dwelling, or raising information technology past mitt as a newborn, does non make it a pet. It remains a wild creature.

Humans have bred dogs, cats, cattle, sheep and other livestock for as long as the last 10,000 to 15,000 years. Domestication is a process that occurs over many generations of animals. Through domestication, over time, undesirable traits are bred out of a species. Fifty-fifty then, the animals ofttimes retain the ability to maim and impale. Four and half one thousand thousand people are still bitten by domesticated dogs each year in the United states.

Wild animals may carry zoonotic diseases that tin be transmitted to people and pets. Some of these, such as rabies, tin exist lethal to humans. Wildlife can carry the same diseases that some of our pets are susceptible to, such as distemper. But unlike pets, wild animals are not vaccinated for diseases or dewormed, nor exercise they encounter a veterinarian regularly. Consequently, the infectious diseases and parasites a wild animal may conduct can be harmful to both people and pets.

Given these risks, information technology brings to question why someone would purposely take an beast from the wild and keep it captive.

Ignorance virtually the perils associated with the wild pets, curiosity most wildlife, honey of animals, ego, novelty or perhaps even profit provide some reasons. The most frequent reason is when people rescue orphans and determine to enhance them. However, a captive wild animal is substantially a prisoner caught betwixt its instincts and its dependence on humans to survive.

As a captive animal grows independent of its caretakers, it may go aggressive, frustrated or may bite, leading to injury or decease. It has not had thousands of years to overcome wild instincts as domesticated animals have. The brute may escape, it may be let get in the wild or it may exist brought to a wildlife rehabilitator. By this time, it may be too tardily to teach it survival skills or appropriate social behavior for its species.

Some wild animals are not protected under Utah state law, meaning yous do not take to possess a valid hunting or trapping license to harvest them. Wild animals, like raccoons and coyotes, crave a permit to house them in captivity. The importation, distribution, relocation, holding in captivity or possession of live coyotes and live raccoons in Utah is prohibited.

Unpermitted wild fauna may exist seized immediately by the Utah Partitioning of Wildlife Resources, the Department of Wellness, the Department of Agronomics and Food, animal control officers or peace officers. If you have an illegally held wild brute, your best grade of action is to contact i of the agencies mentioned or a licensed wildlife rehabilitator. They can determine if the animal can exist re-socialized with its own kind and forage for itself. A wild animate being that has been raised by humans has not been properly prepared for life in the wild. To release a captive wild animal is almost certainly dooming it to suffer starvation, unnatural predation, accident or an unfortunate contact with humans it might meet as friendly.

If yous want a pet consider this. Of the three million cats and dogs that are euthanized in shelters each year, most are healthy and treatable and could have been adopted into new homes.

For more than information, visit https://www.wildawareutah.org/.