The proud owner of dingo Kimba, James Bornstein, is part of the new wave of Australian exotic pet lovers whose unconventional companions are growing in popularity.
In a country known for its unusual wildlife, Bornstein says having a sub-species of the gray wolf in his Sydney home is an opportunity to change people’s negative perceptions about the native wild dog and apex predator.
“Dingoes are so intelligent. We want people to see her [Kimba] and realize they are not vicious animals, they are just like normal dogs,” he told reporters.
Photo: AFP
Dingoes are infamous thanks to the dramatic case of Azaria Chamberlain — a nine-week-old baby apparently snatched by one of the animals during a camping trip in central Australia in 1980, which was made into a movie.
Bornstein hopes his efforts will increase support for conservation, as dingo numbers decline amid habitat loss and cross-breeding with domestic dogs.
His views are echoed by Ben Dessen, reptile manager at Kellyville Pets store in Sydney, who owned his first snake at age six.
“Now we see every six-year-old that we set up with their first reptile — hopefully they want to go on and protect animals and have an appreciation for how amazing these creatures are,” he said.
According to the Australian Veterinary Association, exotic pets are becoming “more and more popular,” with residents owning millions of birds, fish, small mammals and reptiles.
Ernie Chan, a breeder who has kept up to 130 reptiles, says shrinking homes and urbanization have seen potential owners turn to smaller pets that require less maintenance.
“You don’t need to take a snake for a walk,” Chan says. “Everybody’s had dogs and cats for so many years and it’s kind of reptiles’ time to shine.”
Brooke Winters is another exotic-pet convert in a nation famous for koalas, kangaroos and wombats.
“I grew up with Steve Irwin as my idol, so pretty much everything that he did I just wanted to mimic,” Winters said at Macarthur Pets, a large pet store in Sydney that she manages. “I just feel like people don’t appreciate [reptiles] enough and treat them very differently just because they don’t have fur.”
“Crocodile Hunter” Irwin was a world-renowned conservationist whose stunts with dangerous animals drew attention to wildlife Down Under before his death a decade ago.
Despite their growing popularity, there are strict laws across Australia governing what exotic creatures can be kept as pets.
Welfare officials warned of buying an animal that might have been grabbed from the wild.
“Those animals can have really special needs and even if they have been bred in captivity, they are generally wild animals with long histories of living in particular environments,” RSPCA Australia’s Jane Speechley said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS