• RBWells@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    My kids’ elementary biology teacher had a zoo in his classroom, all these snakes and lizards and spiders, all sorts of animals, so in the Christmas break he had to farm them out. We got the tarantula once, and once a boa.

    Also twice raised abandoned baby squirrels we saw kids walking around with. Like my ex just said “dude, you know how to take care of that?” And the kid shook their head no. Yes, twice. One was Earl, one was Pearl. They were sweet, and very sharp.

    One of my kids’ swim coaches had a friend with a pet crow, too. A sailor with a pet crow; in fact a creepy sailor with a pet crow

    I am sure you can guess what state I live in.

  • miss_demeanour@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 month 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…

  • ieatpwns@lemmy.world
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    1 month 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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      1 month ago
      1. caiman
      2. alligator

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

      • Wolf314159@startrek.website
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        1 month 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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          1 month 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

          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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            1 month 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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              1 month ago

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

              • Wolf314159@startrek.website
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                1 month ago

                Reading is about more than reciting facts and quoting sources. Sure, you can read, but you have utterly failed to comprehend the context or the article or the actual substance of my comments.

  • Boomer Humor Doomergod@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I worked with some 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.

  • GingaNinga@lemmy.world
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    1 month 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.

  • Majorllama@lemmy.world
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    1 month 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.

    • chremylus@lemmy.imontheweb.net
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      1 month ago

      I had a ferret in my 20s. Little dude bathed at least once a week and still smelled. Was (almost) litter trained and could bend in half, spastically hopping around like a little smelly crackhead

      • Majorllama@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Yeah they stink no matter what. You can get their stinky gland removed but I’m still not sure if that’s good for them or not. Idk. I’m not a veterinarian and they are super illegal here so it’s not really something I am concerned about at this present moment haha.

        • chremylus@lemmy.imontheweb.net
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          1 month ago

          Heard about the gland thing, and definitely not into it, but he had just an overall musky smell. Not like he sprayed or anything. We went to beach a lot and he’d hang out under umbrella shade and flirt with the girls.

          • Majorllama@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            Yeah the smell is strong and odd but it’s not outright bad. Just a bit weird until you get used it.

  • dustyData@lemmy.world
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    1 month 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.

  • dethedrus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 month ago

    My parents had a zebra when I was growing up in Northern California. He was skittish, to the point that this animal lover never got closer than 10 feet until it wound bolt. He brayed at sunrise, easily drowning out the roosters. He sadly ingested part of a mat in his stall which ended up killing him.

    After my parents moved once I left home, they got 2 more of these fancy donkeys.

  • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
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    1 month 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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      1 month 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.

  • Hikermick@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    When I was a kid back in the 70’s there was a woman with a spider monkey who lived in the same trailer park as my grandfather. She rode around on a bike with it on her shoulder and would stop when my sister and I were visiting. We were never allowed to pet it, we’d watch while the lady fed it clovers.

  • chaosCruiser@futurology.today
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    1 month 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.

    • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.eeOPM
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      1 month 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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        1 month 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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          1 month 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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            1 month 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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              1 month 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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          1 month 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 …

  • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
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    1 month 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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      1 month 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.