• dustyData@lemmy.world
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    2 months 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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    2 months 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”.

    • Majorllama@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      We had one get into our trash once. I guess we had thrown out some yogurt that was starting to go bad and this little fucker got yogurty little foot prints all over our front porch. It almost looked intentional how many there were and how spread out it got them. Thankfully we just let our dogs out and they pretty much licked the porch clean lol.

    • garbagebagel@lemmy.world
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      2 months 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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    2 months 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.

  • garbagebagel@lemmy.world
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    2 months 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.

  • ieatpwns@lemmy.world
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    2 months 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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      2 months 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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        2 months 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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          2 months 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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            2 months 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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              2 months ago

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

  • GingaNinga@lemmy.world
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    2 months 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.

  • miss_demeanour@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 months 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…

  • Majorllama@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I live in California. Pretty much all the cool pets are illegal here.

    That being said I knew a guy who had a raccoon and several ferrets. Their house smelled awful but once you were there for awhile you kinda stopped smelling it and the raccoon and ferrets were adorable together.

  • TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months 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 :(

  • Sequentialsilence@lemmy.world
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    2 months 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.

  • QuarterSwede@lemmy.world
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    2 months 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.

    • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.eeOP
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      2 months 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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        2 months 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.eeOP
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          2 months 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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            2 months 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.eeOP
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              2 months 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.

  • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
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    2 months 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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      2 months 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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        2 months 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.

  • Twitchy1@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 months ago

    The guys yard was 4 lots so fairly nice sized (1 acre?)… Underground tunnels that lead to “satellite” cages for the prairie dogs to keep an eye on the yard. Venomous snake shed(cobras and rattlesnakes) and to top it off a pair of breeding crocodile monitors. A true Florida man.