Most exotic animals seen on the pet trade

groundskeeper24 said:
A gentleman I was Facebook friends with managed to acquire a young male warthog, then later a female. He kept a lot of exotics, mostly reptiles and standard unusual farm fare like llamas and ratites.

He loved that warthog and had raised it from a very young age, having even visited it at it's previous residence at a petting zoo. I thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen, until I didn't.

One day he had to make some repairs to the fence in the enclosure he'd built. The male was mature and had paired with the now also mature sow. Every time he bent down to tend to the fence, the male charged and cut his legs out from under him. There was nothing he could do about it but scream once the boar started goring him when he was on his back. He managed to get himself to safety after sustaining life-threatening injuries. The pictures he posted were nothing short of horrifying.

In short, I'm probably going to pass if I even have a chance to buy a warthog.
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I hope your friend healed from his injuries :( I've seen quite a few non-AZA zoos add young warthogs in the last few years, wanting them to be ambassadors (always ambassadors for some reason), and then they all disappear as they hit maturity and are too difficult to handle. I don't know why places think they can be worked like that at all, especially males?! Columbus Zoo keeps theirs in the same building as their cheetahs and hyenas. The warthogs are protected contact, the cheetahs are not.
 
TinoPup said:
I don't know why places think they can be worked like that at all, especially males?!
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San Diego Zoo had a Warthog ambassador for awhile, that may have sparked a bunch of it. Afaik that was a one off that they haven't done again so far, no idea what the outcome or overall success was.
 
Great Argus said:
San Diego Zoo had a Warthog ambassador for awhile, that may have sparked a bunch of it. Afaik that was a one off that they haven't done again so far, no idea what the outcome or overall success was.
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I don’t want to further derail the thread but when Cheyenne Mountain Zoo’s warthogs were still young back at 2020, they were harness training one of their warthogs and I remember seeing the most reinforced harness Ive seen on an animal with the harness having two lines each being held by a different keeper. It was like as if the keepers were handling a dragon.
 
PossumRoach said:
I don’t want to further derail the thread but when Cheyenne Mountain Zoo’s warthogs were still young back at 2020, they were harness training one of their warthogs and I remember seeing the most reinforced harness Ive seen on an animal with the harness having two lines each being held by a different keeper. It was like as if the keepers were handling a dragon.
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I assume that the tusks are the main issue with warthogs, though I suppose that they could be made blunt easily enough? Though I assume that this also isn't considered as best practice.
 
A Swedish investment group bought the by-far most popular online platform for private animal sales in Czechia - www.ifauna.cz and closed all sections other than for dogs, cats and birds. Local community of amateur breeders of herps, small or exotic mammals as well as producers of equipment or animal food etc are livid.
 
TinoPup said:
I hope your friend healed from his injuries :( I've seen quite a few non-AZA zoos add young warthogs in the last few years, wanting them to be ambassadors (always ambassadors for some reason), and then they all disappear as they hit maturity and are too difficult to handle. I don't know why places think they can be worked like that at all, especially males?! Columbus Zoo keeps theirs in the same building as their cheetahs and hyenas. The warthogs are protected contact, the cheetahs are not.
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Probably because of Poomba from The Lion King
Most Disney-raised people don't know swines have bad temper if not domesticated or trained well
 
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dillotest0 said:
I assume that the tusks are the main issue with warthogs, though I suppose that they could be made blunt easily enough? Though I assume that this also isn't considered as best practice.
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I knew a breeder of rare breed domestic pigs who wouldn’t sell males as pets, even castrated ones. The risk of accidental injury from tusks was too great. Females were fine.
Also, almost any hand reared hoofstock (in the widest sense) male is likely to be ‘difficult’ in adulthood, not having had appropriate socialisation. Hand reared horses apparently aren’t easy…..and entire male hand reared Llamas are said to be dangerous.
 
Someone in Texas was offering a pair of Marbled Polecats and their offspring on Exotic Animals for Sale. No photos, though, and I strongly suspect this is probably bogus.

I did see dwarf mongoose listed from elsewhere, however, which surprised me. Not encountered them in the trade before.

~Thylo
 
ThylacineAlive said:
Someone in Texas was offering a pair of Marbled Polecats and their offspring on Exotic Animals for Sale. No photos, though, and I strongly suspect this is probably bogus.

I did see dwarf mongoose listed from elsewhere, however, which surprised me. Not encountered them in the trade before.

~Thylo
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Dwarf mongoose are kusimanse, another "mountain coati" type thing. There was someone with marbled polecats in the USA but I haven't seen the species catch on at all, sadly.
 
PossumRoach said:
I don’t want to further derail the thread but when Cheyenne Mountain Zoo’s warthogs were still young back at 2020, they were harness training one of their warthogs and I remember seeing the most reinforced harness Ive seen on an animal with the harness having two lines each being held by a different keeper. It was like as if the keepers were handling a dragon.
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Two lines is AZA policy for dangerous animals, it's always done with cheetahs, too. I've seen a wide variety of harnesses and collars on leashed cheetahs, though.
 
TinoPup said:
Dwarf mongoose are kusimanse, another "mountain coati" type thing. There was someone with marbled polecats in the USA but I haven't seen the species catch on at all, sadly.
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The photo given showed actual dwarf mongoose, though, of course you never know where the photos are actually coming from.

I'd be interested to know where the polecats would have come from given their status.

~Thylo
 
I don’t know (or forgot in case it was) if it was brought up yet, but cape foxes did arrive in the US some time ago.
 
ThylacineAlive said:
The photo given showed actual dwarf mongoose, though, of course you never know where the photos are actually coming from.

I'd be interested to know where the polecats would have come from given their status.

~Thylo
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Well that's odd, then. I wonder if it was a photo they got from googling "dwarf mongoose" instead of photos of their own animal?

Same on the polecats. Zorilla hasn't really appeared elsewhere, either.
 
FBBird said:
I

I knew a breeder of rare breed domestic pigs who wouldn’t sell males as pets, even castrated ones. The risk of accidental injury from tusks was too great. Females were fine.
Also, almost any hand reared hoofstock (in the widest sense) male is likely to be ‘difficult’ in adulthood, not having had appropriate socialisation. Hand reared horses apparently aren’t easy…..and entire male hand reared Llamas are said to be dangerous.
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I even had a pet lamb who we had castrated young who became too much of a handful and needed rehoming into a mob of sheep. My wife and kids couldn’t go into the yard with him and he kept harassing the dogs, even I had to carry a stick when I went into his yard.
 
A European breeder called Bion Terrarium on Facebook was selling Galapagos Lava Lizards and also was breeding several species of New Zealand Geckos with plans to sell them eventually
 
I've seen Common Marmosets, Meerkats, Mandarin Ducks, Wallabies, and Fennec foxes inside a pet store. I also saw a poster selling Caracal kittens and Hyena cubs.
 
King of Komodo Dragons said:
A European breeder called Bion Terrarium on Facebook was selling Galapagos Lava Lizards and also was breeding several species of New Zealand Geckos with plans to sell them eventually
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Bion is a Ukrainian facility that's always had some real rarities. There was some concern that the current conflict would threaten their collection, but it seems that they are getting by.
 
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