Keeping Australian Native Animals as Pets
Living with the Australian environment
It is being argued that with 59 mammals at risk of extinction, the survival of many Australian species relies on bringing them into the family home as pets. Not only would pet ownership result in a vast increase in the population of native animals, it would also result in an ideological shift in the Australian community that would bring it closer to Australian native animals. Instead of seeing themselves as disconnected from the ecosystem, keeping native animals as pets would help Australians feel a part of it.
The most likely pet in the short term is the Quoll. It sort of resembles a cat except it has a pouch, bright eyes, a moist pink nose and a powerful bite. It can grow to up to 75 cm in length and weigh up to 7kg. It will even use a kitty litter tray if trained. Professor Mike Archer, former Director of the Australian Museum, once kept a Quoll as a pet and was full of praise. According to Archer,
"I just can’t praise these animals highly enough as companions for human beings. They have all the good features in dogs and cats, and in my experience not a single downside."(1)
The view was echoed by Dr Paul Hopwood, a vet from the university of Sydney:
"If quolls are caught in the wild, their temperament can be quite fierce. But if they are captive bred they are gentle and socialised."(2)
As well as bringing a lot of happiness to a family, keeping native animals as pets will also have environmental benefits. Unlike cats, if they escape, they can easily form a balance with other native wildlife. As an added bonus, they can even strengthen the genetic diversity of their species. This would be particularly helpful for the Tasmanian Devil, which is suffering a cancerous disease caused by having little genetic diversity.
Despite the advantages, there remains staunch opposition to change. In government submissions, organisations such as The Wildlife Foundation have argued that if native pets were allowed, there would be 'untold suffering of animals and untold heartbreak for many well-intentioned, caring people'(2). It then suggested that if people wanted to care for native animals, they should join The Wildlife Foundation.
A cynic would argue that there was an obvious conflict of interest in the Wildlife Foundation's submission. It was trying to protect its revenue streams rather than protect the survival of Australian native species.
Animal liberation groups are also opposed to keeping native animals as pets. In its government submissions, Animal Liberation (Victoria) claimed:
“People procuring these unusual species for 'pets' often do so as an indication of (sic) social standing, or for a talking point. The animal's food and behavioural needs are often ignored, or not even known in the first place. Owners prefer cheap and easy method (sic)of feeding and housing. Many animals end up dumped and abandoned or sold to a succession(sic) owners." (2)
Considering it was illegal to sell native animals as ordinary pets or bred them for sale, Animal Liberation's use of present tense indicated that it was probably talking about Australian native animals being kept in foreign countries. If so, it was probably guessing about the motivations of the owners. As for how the Australian pets would go in Australia, it would be quite right to say that if native animals were allowed as pets, some would be neglected and abused. Just like cats and dogs, some would be dumped, starved, beaten and treated in a cruel manner. Nevertheless, saying they should not be allowed as pets because some would be abused would be like saying all people should be sterilised because some parents neglect, abuse, rape or kill their children. Likewise, just because a handicapped child needs special care is no reason to remove the child and make him or her a ward of the state. Good policy rewards good behaviour and tries to correct the bad. It doesn't forbid everything just because there is a risk of something bad happening.
Aside form being illogical, Animal Liberation's point of view seemed to be saying that it was ok to abuse cats and dogs because they weren't natives. For lovers of cats and dogs, it was quite a negative view point. If Animal Liberation truly cared about animals, perhaps they should have spent more time on helping people care for all animals rather than trying to confine animal cruelty to dogs and cats. Definately, Animal Liberation's passion had not been used in an efficient or educated way.
A media piece run by the state-controlled ABC also made some strong arguments against native animals being kept as pets. The piece quoted Dr Karen Viggers and Dr David Lindenmayer, who were deemed to be experts because, like your average bushwalker, they had "experience in wildlife biology and conservation. (3)" According to the two experts, if a native pet industry developed, funds would be diverted from far more important conservation projects, such as restoring native habitats and setting aside reserves. In other words, there might be less funding for scientists to do their research.
Perhaps denying funds to scientists would be a good thing. On Macquarie Island, scientists were given $500,000 to eliminate 160 cats. The last cat was eliminated with much celebration in 2001. Amazingly, the scientists just didn’t contemplate what might happen to rat and rabbit populations if cats were removed. Even though it was common knowledge that they are fast breeders and in the case of rabbits, becoming immune to myxomatosis, the scientists couldn't see that their actions would lead to an ecological disater. Over the next 6 years, rabbit populations grew from around 20,000 to 130,000 and in combination with exploding rat populations, caused massive environmental damage. The farce clearly showed that if the future of the Australia's wildlife is solely left to scientists, it is almost certain that more species of wildlife will go extinct. The problem with scientists is that they only see species, they don't see ecosystems. Worst of all, they see dollar signs.
The Unintended Consequences of Changing Nature’s Balance
By ELIZABETH SVOBODA Published: February 16, 2009
The consequence of scientific "help." Left, Macquarie Island in 2001. Right, Macquarie Island in 2007 after environmental scientists removed 160 feral cats.
In addition to concerns about money being directed away from researchers, Viggers argued that humans would contract diseases from native animals. According to Viggers,
"Many major diseases - flu, smallpox, tuberculosis etc - originally came from human contact with animals when pigs, cattle and sheep were domesticated." (3)
Although Viggers was right to say that viruses can jump species, any kind of contact can cause the jump. For example, SARS is believed to have originated from Chinese hunting wild animals. AIDS might have jumped from Chimpanzees to humans the same way. If Viggers was truly concerned about human welfare, she would have been lobbying to stop all people having contact with animals. That would include researchers that monitor, tag, breed and release native wildlife. It would also include land care managers that trap and kill animals. The fact that she wasn't lobbying against her fellow researchers suggested she wanted an emotive fear campaign to argue against keeping native animals as pets and didn't really care about protecting humans from disease. In other words, she was being dishonest.
Dr Karen Viggers fears such scenes could lead to new viral outbreaks, or lead to money being directed away from conservation projects. She would prefer a cat or rabbit replace the Wallaby.
A final argument used by Viggers was that keeping native animals as pets wouldn't help conservation. According to Viggers:
"Keeping budgies has not contributed to parrot conservation, nor has the domestication of dogs and cats assisted efforts to conserve the wolf or large cats like the lion and tiger."(3)
Although dogs are a sub-species of Wolves and domestic cats are related to Lions, they are not the same animals. Viggers might as well have said the domestication of dogs and cats didn’t help the conservation of Elephants and Dodos. Keeping dogs and cats as pets has helped the conservation of dogs and cats and that it the issue. Furthermore, in Australia, the dogs and cats that have gone wild have further strengthened their species that exist in the Australian bush. Keeping dogs and cats as pets has most certainly helped dogs and cats maintain a strong presence in the Australian ecosystem.
One of the oddest arguments against keeping native animals as pets is that it will result genetic mixing. According to Peter McRae, a man who raised nearly $750,000 to build a 25 square kilometre enclosure for endangered wildlife, genetic diversity has now become harmful for a species. In his own simple words:
" There are some sorts of problems too; I think particularly in the case of things like bilbies, where you’ve got populations across Australia that have got different genetics, if we start putting them into a pet situation and we as a very mobile group of human beings who can be in Charleville one day and Perth the next day with our pets, there’s potentially some sorts of problems in terms of mixing genetics up."(4)
Keeping Bilbies in a big cage perhaps represented a conflict of interests for McRae, and his desire for funding may have made him less capable of giving an educated opinion. Alternatively, if he was scientifically educated, perhaps his fear of genetic mixing was an example of scientific emotion instead of scientific logic. Scientists like to categorise things. They love going out to the bush and finding something like a snail with a different coloured shell. Ideally, the snail will be sufficiently different to allow it to be categorised as a new species. If not, the diversity might be explained as some kind of localised environmental adaptation, which is interesting as well. For scientists (and most people), a world without categories is quite boring. The concern for scientists is that a snail with a dark shell that is on the verge of becoming a new species might mate with a snail with a light shell, and blur the categories once more. Even though the mixing of genetics is probably great for the species, it makes the environmental world more boring for the humans that want to study it. Perhaps when McRae said, " some sorts of problems", he was referring to the emotional distress he might personally feel if the categories seperating Bilby populations became blurred. If McRae wasn't motivated by scientific emotion or money, it was possible that he was just stupid.
Although few wilderness groups or scientists would admit it, the biggest reason to oppose keeping native animals as pets is that it undermines their return-to-1788-ideology. Wilderness groups want to turn back time to how it was in 1788 and preserve it that way forever. They don't like the idea of the ecosystem changing, species evolving or humans interacting with the native ecosystems. It undermines they desire to see the common Australian as the bad criminals and themselves as the good wardens protecting nature. A good example of the ideology can be seen in the words of Dr A. J. Brown, from Griffith Law School;
"Today, for environment groups and land management agencies, wilderness is a land use classification which relates specifically to growing respect for the non-commercial, non-industrial, non-colonial values of those landscapes that have been least disturbed since 1788. Most recently, the Commonwealth Government discussion paper on wilderness protection defined a wilderness as:
"... an area that is, or can be restored to be, a sufficient size to enable the long-term protection of its natural systems and biological diversity; substantially undisturbed by colonial and modern technological society; and remote at its core from points of mechanised access and other evidence of colonial and modern technological society. " (5)
It is an ideology that is obsessed with keeping humans and the environment separated. The ideology motivates people to enclose native animals in fenced-off areas and then use 1080 poison to eliminate the ferals that breach the fences. Although the enclosures are sometimes designed with the best intentions, the survival of a species can not be ensured by locking it in a cage and paying someone to care for it. Likewise, an ecosystem will never be balanced or adapt to change if humans keep interfering with poisons, viruses, and guns in a naive attempt to make it like it was in 1788. The likes of Peter McRae and his big cages are not the solutions. While his 25 square kilometre enclosure protects Bilbies within it, it doesn't protect the Bilbies in 7,600,000 square kilometres outside of it. Furthermore, if he maintained his philosophy of not mixing genetics, his Bilbies would eventually become inbred and die of a disease.
The Dingo offers a useful precedent in regards to the value of a relationship with humans. It arrived in Australia between 3-5,000 years ago. Although it was less well adapted to Australian conditions than was the Thylacine (marsupial wolf), the Dingo formed a symbiotic relationship with humans that eventually caused the Thylacine to go extinct from mainland Australia. Today, the Dingo is breeding with domestic dogs and becoming more adaptable as a result. If a Dingo bred with a Whippet, the offspring would better able to catch rabbits. If a Dingo bred with a Great Dane, the offspring would be more able to form large packs capable of pulling down feral cows. If a Dingo bred with a Bull Terrier, the offspring would be more capable of pulling down feral pigs. Admittedly, if a Dingo bred with a Shih-tzu, the offspring would be useless and probably die. The great advantage of diversity is that natural selection results in the most suitable hybrid surviving. The greater the diversity, the greater the number of potential hybrids that can adapt to change.
Although the decline in the Dingo’s purity is sad from an emotional perspective, it helps the dog survive in the Australian bush. Trying to preserve the Dingo in its pure form is really no different than breeding defective species like the Shih-tzu for their aesthetic value. It is done for human benefit, not the benefit of the species. Likewise, trying to preserve native marsupials in a pure form in a cage is done to benefit human emotional reasons rather than to help the animals adapt to change.
Like it or not, humans are a major part of the Australian ecosystem. Over the next few thousands years, the dominant native animals will be those that are best able to form a symbiotic relationship with the evolution of the human lifestyle. There are an estimated 7.4 million households in Australia. If every household kept one native animal as a pet, then there would be 7.4 million households forming affectionate ideas to native fauna and 7.4 million households forming a symbiotic relationship with native animals. 7.4 million Australians caring for native wildlife is a far superior situation than a couple of researchers with their cages intent on preserving genetic purity or getting funding to go around killing things.
Australian native animals as pets in foreign countries
In foreign countries, the Sugar Glider has been made into a great pet. Because they are social animals, they bond very well with humans. They are also intelligent, playful, inquisitive, cute and relatively clean. They eat nectar, fruit, insects and even small rodents, so fit in very well in a suburban backyard.
Because there is a ban on the expert of Australian wildlife, the Sugar Gliders are probably descendants of individuals that were smuggled out of Australia, Indonesia or New Guinea.
In foreign countries, Blue-tongues make great pets. The live up to 20 years in captivity and require very little maintenance. They just need an old fish tank, light and food twice a week. They eat anything, such as cooked meat, snails, insects or dog food. In America, they can sell for around $500.
The Rock Wallaby is endangered in most parts of Australia and will probably go extinct in the Australian bush in the near future. Fortunately, they are not threatened as a species. In Japan, they are sold as pets. Because there is a ban of the export of native Australian wildlife, it is not clear how they got to Japan. It is possible that some individuals may have been extracted from the feral populations that have been established in New Zealand, Hawaii, the Isle of Man, Ireland, Scotland or England.
Because they reach heights of around 55 cm, they are not the ideal marsupial pet. Their size gives them quite a good ability to escape enclosures. This is one of the reasons why they have gone feral in other countries.
Potential native pets
The Bilby is potentially a great replacement for the pet rabbit. Like the rabbit, it burrows and eats vegetation. In addition, it also eats spiders, seeds, fruit, fungi, lizards and small mammals. As a pet, it could be fed cat food or bird seed, or both. It could also run around the garden catching funnelweb spiders, snails and mice.
In the wild, the Bilby is endangered and will soon be extinct due to the actions of conservationists. The main threat is that large rabbit populations sustain a large numbers of predators. While this is not a huge problem for the Bilby as long as rabbit populations remain high, it becomes a huge problem when conservationists decimate rabbit populations with warren ripping, poisons or viruses. When rabbits are rapidly eliminated from the ecosystem, large populations of predators turn to the Bilby, and quickly eliminate them before being eliminated themselves. The fast-breeding rabbits can then fill the ecosystems void far quicker than the Bilby. As long a the Australian bush remains menanced by conservationists trying to make it like it was in 1788, the Bilby has no hope in the wild.
Before Bilbies can be kept as pets, a few practical issues need to be overcome. Specifically, the interests of the owners of the electrified Bilby enclosures. Keeping Bilbies as pets would undermine the financial interests of the operators of the enclosures and strip face from those who funded them. To deal with the problem, perhaps the enclosures could be given a temporary monopoly on breeding Bilbies for sale. As long as they could make some money and keep their face, they may come around.
Eastern Quolls are potentially great pets. They are about the same size as a cat, similar intelligence and will use a kitter litter tray. Unfortunately, they are believed to have gone extinct on the mainland around the 1970s. With no mainland populations left, it would be quite difficult for smugglers to export them to foreign countries and so ensure their survival as a species. Some wild populations still exist in Tasmania, but the species is endagered due to the actions of conservationists. For example, around the year 2000, a rumour developed that foxes had taken hold. To be on the safe side, the State Government funded conservationists to lay 140,000 poison baits targeting foxes, many of which ended up in the stomachs of Quoll. No dead foxes were ever found. In fact, it looks like the rumour of foxes was just a rumour.
The odd wilderness protection policy caught the attention of David Obendorf, a vet with a research focus in marsupial diseases. According to Obendorf:
"Three Tasmanians have each offered $1,000 fox rewards (Tasmanian Times: "$1,000 fox reward"). All remain unclaimed despite farmers, landowners and professional shooters all knowing about them. And yet the government "guessimate" claims there are up to 400 foxes living in Tasmania ... somewhere. In my opinion Tasmania's use of 1080 poison over the last five decades - to kill browsing and grazing native herbivores - has had a significant effect on the over-population followed by the facial tumour disease-crash in devil numbers and in the widespread establishment of feral cats across the island....Ironically the state government has now ceased the use of 1080-laced carrot/apple baits on public lands to kill grazing wildlife but now uses tens of thousands of meat baits in public forests where they claim they are targeting those cryptic foxes."
With smuggling difficult, the only real hope for Eastern Quolls is for Australian laws to change, which would allow them to be kept as pets by Australians. If irresponsible owners dumped their pets, at least it would be a small step in re-populating mainland ecosystems with a required predator.
Tasmanian Devils used to be kept as pets. In the 1950s, Australians used to put them on a leash and take them for walks. They found that Devils responded well to kindness but very poorly to harsh corrective measures.
Currently, the Devil is under threat of extinction. Low genetic diversity has made it susceptible to a contageous disease. If they are simply locked up in a Tasmanian cage, they will probably go the same way as the Tasmanian Aborigines that were locked up on Flinders Island to ensure their survival, but went extinct instead.
The Devil's best hope for short-time survival is as pets in the homes spread throughout the Australian mainland. If irresponsible owners dumped them, as they inevitably would, at least it would be a small step in repopulation mainland ecosystems with a predator that would kill foxes and cats, but make little impact upon native marsupials. Because the Devil is slow and cumbersome, about the only live animal that it can catch is a cat, which has no endurance, and fox pups, which are left in dens.
The Bush Rat (Bogal) is not a marsupial. Although it is related to the black rat that came on European ships, it is a different species with different habits. It is not known when the bush rat arrived in Australia, but some estimates put their co-evolution in the Australian ecosystem at 2 million years. They have large round ears, long whiskers and seem to hop and jump over the landscape.
Bush rats are not usually found in suburbia or in houses. Beause they tend to stay outside, they fall prey to cats. A few dogs in the backyard can help them establish a presence.
The Antechinus is a marsupial predator about the size of a small rat. It would make a good pet or a handy pest controller around the house. They do not chew on cables, do not have the pungent odour associated with mice, and rarely eat stored food. They primarily prey on invertebrates such as spiders, beetles, weevils, lizards and perhaps mice. People concerned about funnel web spiders would receive some comfort in the knowledge that their local Antechinus would pick them off as they wonder about. (All native animals are immune to the funnel web.)
Potentially, breeding Antechinus for pet sale could be a problem due to their unusual reproduction habits. The males basically work themselves into a sexual frenzy and then die of exhaustion. The women will give birth to around 8 babies, which will hang off her teats as she walks around with them in her pouch. She dies not long after they leave the pouch.
In the 19th century, wombats were kept as pets by many well-to-do Europeans. Even Napolean had a pet wombat. The fact that the fashion of owning pet wombats died out probably reflected some of the difficulties in keeping wombats as pets. The main problem is that there are extremely powerful diggers that like to hide. If kept as pets in suburbia, they could make a mess of carpets, flower beds, fences and anything else that stands in the way of their desire to dig, explore or hide. Even though they are not suitable for suburbia, there are many rural properties where they could be kept as pets. They have a very playful quality and a loyalty to a region that allows the property owner and wombat to live quite happily together.
Possums are easy to make into a semi-pet. The confidence of wild possums can easily be won with some fruit. Although picking them up and putting them on your lap as you watch TV is still problematic, they still make a nice addition to the scenery. On the negative side, as a semi-pet, they act a bit like wandering cats. They lose their fear of humans and share multiple carers in the same neighbourhood. A neighbour who isn’t keen on the damage that possums do to fruit trees might then kill it.
Allowed pets
Birds
Birds such as Galahs, Cocktoos and Budgies have been made into pets. Galahs and Cockatoos are prized because they can say a few words and are very communicative with humans. Ironically, the birds are not threatened in Australia and arguably the ones whose natural character is most constrained by being forced to live in a cage.
Crocodiles
Some states and territories allow crocodiles to be kept as pets. In the interests of public safety, numerous regulations are attached to getting the licence for ownership
1)http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/earth/stories/s145805.htm
2)http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s29269.htm
3)http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/rrat_ctte/completed_inquiries/1996-99/wild/report/c17.htm
4)http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/enviro/EnviroRepublish_332874.htm
5)http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/earth/stories/s145805.htm
6)2)http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AboriginalLB/1992/31.html
