Desperately seeking a last-minute Christmas gift? Don't, whatever you do, give in to temptation and buy an exotic pet, the World Wildlife Fund pleaded ahead of the holiday break.
Snakes, iguanas and parrots suffer in captivity and may be carriers of potentially fatal diseases. Many moreover are protected by international accords and should never have been captured and placed on the market in the first place.
The craze for rare and exotic pets among people often ignorant about the animals' basic needs means that national societies for the protection of animals are often swamped by calls for shelter.
Owners who knew little to nothing either about their diet, heat and humidity requirements or need for dark or for light have simply dumped them.
Trade in wildlife is the world's second biggest illegal traffic after drugs. In Brazil for example 38 million wild animals are captured each year and sold by rings that make billions of dollars.
In France alone, the WWF said in an interview, more than two million live animals protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) were imported between 1990 and 1999. Thus a whopping 90 percent of Gabonese grey parrots for example, a favourite with buyers, were captured in the forest, notably in Cameroon.
"Their place is in their natural habitat," said the WWF.
Tropical diseases experts say the illicit trade is also risky for public health.
Tropical bats for instance carry potentially fatal viruses, including that of the deadly Ebola disease. The newly-popular pet, the prairy dog (a species of squirrel), is known in its native North America as a carrier of bubonic plague. There are not so many of them about at Christmas, but a lot in April after birthing.
The common bush-tailed possum, another newcomer on the tropical pets market, is a marsupial held responsible for bovine tubercolosis in New Zealand. Birds often carry chlamydia, a bacteria causing many infections among humans, and reptiles carry salmonella.
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