native pets - why not?

Discussion in 'Planting, growing, nurturing Plants' started by mereki, Jul 31, 2007.

  1. SueinWA

    SueinWA Junior Member

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    I don't believe there is a type of 'wild' animal yet that hasn't been harmed more than helped by trying to make it a pet.

    If its an endangered species, would the people caring for it be allowing it to breed, to multiply the species?

    If it was allowed to multiply, what efforts would be made to return the young to natural habitat?

    Would the situation degrade into the animals becoming status symbols, with no knowledge of habitat, housing or feeding?

    Would they end up dead from inattention, or dumped on the doorstep of the local animal control in a box when the newness wore off, and the animals became too much trouble to care for?

    And would the abandoned animals, turned over to animal authorities, end up being euthanized due to health defects because the owners couldn't be bothered to feed them the correct diet?

    By the way, don't blame feral cats and dogs for doing what comes naturally to them. The problem with them began the way most problems begin: with human beings. And you know what THEY'RE like...

    Sue
     
  2. pebble

    pebble Junior Member

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    One problem with domesticating natives for pets is that those pets will breed with wild natives and affect the gene pool, negatively IMO. There is a difference between a domestic animal that has gone feral and a wild animal.


    Also, I'm not sure that with endangered animals that having them as pets would be good. It's likely that if there were more of the animal as pets than in the wild then people would be caring less about saving the ecosystems needed to ensure the animals long term survival in the wild.
     
  3. Michaelangelica

    Michaelangelica Junior Member

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    i guess you now agree with the aborigines that they make very good eating?!
     
  4. Michaelangelica

    Michaelangelica Junior Member

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    Thats why you would need to continue with the micro-chipping as done with cats and dogs. to keep tabs on what people are doing

    I don't think very rare animals should be left in the care of amateurs.

    Re possums. I wish I was a New Zealander. They eat my parsley, my violets, buggered a $6,000 air conditioning system, eat my compost and wake me at all hours rumbling around the roof or coming home at 5am after partyining all night.
    Then they had WW3 with the kookaburra about ownership of a ant-nest high rise residence for a week. The kookas finally won by keeping the possum up all day. Bloody noisy suburbia.

    I did onece see a tiny pigmy possum in my garden eating the new spring Wisteria buds. at first I thought it was a mouse. It was beautiful.

    Apart from possums though, most native animals echinda, wombat carpet snakes and others have not survived encroaching suburbia.
     
  5. mereki

    mereki Junior Member

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    and so a moral dillema.

    In this post i failed to take into account bad people that would not look after their pet - i assumed pets are generally loved.

    Take the orchid for example. Putting legal requirements aside for the purpose of moral debate.

    Someone is in an area with a high abundance of rare but naturally occuring orchids. they take some, not many, ensuring that spaces cleared of orchid would soon be covered by more orchid.

    they took this orchid, not of course to sell, but because they knew where and how to plant it in suberbia to increase its habitat dispersal.

    say 90% of the replanted orchid survives, and only 70% of natural orchids survive the summer heat wave

    is this person bad?
     
  6. Tas'

    Tas' Junior Member

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    Why do you wish you were a New Zealander? They have big problems with Australian possums over there.
     
  7. Michaelangelica

    Michaelangelica Junior Member

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    You can shoot possums in NZ!

    I am reminded of another 'wildlife" story.
    I had a neighbour a Professor of Zooology who was asked to go and look at a huge Earth Wall Dam in outback NSW.
    The engineeers where very proud of their accomplishments and thir minimal disturbance to local wild life and were showing off their erudition outrageously

    My professor friend said
    "How long do you expect the dam to last?"
    "What do you mean?" said the engineers, "a hundred years or more -for ever maybe!"
    "Well", drawled the old Prof "I'll give it three months before the wombats dig some decent sized holes in it."
    There was very long stunned silence in the room as the colour drained from the engineer's faces.

    Some thousands of square yards/meters of steel mesh and a cement slurry was hastily added to the dam wall
     
  8. pebble

    pebble Junior Member

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    It's true that we can shoot possums here. Unfortunately most possum deaths are by poison (1080, cyanide or, worse, blood thinners) :cry:
     

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