Over the years, what sorts of animals have turned out to be huge mistakes as pets?
I wouldn’t use the word “huge,” but there are exotic animals that should never be made into household pets. You’ll probably get mail from people saying, “I love my monkey,” but I’m not sure that primates should be kept as household pets. And a lot of reptiles have problems as pets. It’s hard for them to thrive, and they take a very long time to die, so people don’t even realize they’re not treating their reptile well until it’s at death’s door. You also want to think long and hard about where an exotic animal has come from – was it captive-bred in a farm setting or was it caught in the wild? That is not a good thing — wild-caught animals sometimes die in large numbers before they reach pet stores. Katherine Grier is a professor at the University of Delaware’s department of history, and she is curator of the traveling exhibition Pets in America. The exhibition is currently at the National Heritage Museum in Lexington, Mass.
