Come on. Come on.
Are you talking to me?
Exotic pets are widely seen as a problem
with the potential to contribute to invasive species catastrophes.
I know, I know, eh, eh, eh, be good, be good.
There is every likelihood that they could establish themselves in the UK.
But with popularity increasing, exotic owners argue they’re just misunderstood.
No-one's ever been killed by a tanuki.
Yet.
The most high maintenance animal I have is the dog. He requires the most work by far.
Exotic animals are also kept in zoos,
where they live out lives of close human interaction, barely recognisable to their wild relatives.
Ready? One, two, three down.
There could be situations where they would benefit from psychoactive drugs.
Can new laws aimed at improving welfare and protecting animals in the wild
have a positive impact on problematic species?
No one's got any idea who keeps what, or what they're doing with those animals.
Imagine finding this in your airing cupboard.
What do you think it could be?
Beastwatch is a nationwide network of around 500 volunteers
committed to the safe recovery of escaped and abandoned exotic pets.
I wouldn’t necessarily use a snake hook to catch a corn snake.
You could take it and pin it to lift it. You could lift it and tail it and box it.
I would just generally pick it up.
But you're well practised at this, Mike. I don't think I’d do that.
Yeah. There should always be options.
If you're not sure what to do, that's probably your best option.
And stick a brick on top of it until someone gets there that knows what they're doing.
Today, the group’s leaders are putting on training demonstrations for their volunteer responders.
You see? She is incredibly defensive.
This is quite atypical for corn snakes, to be honest with you.
Well, she's been pulled around and...
She's not a trained actor.
She's probably not too happy about being disturbed.
But this particular snake did terrorise a whole village for a couple of weeks.
Just down the road from here. People afraid to open their doors and windows.
She's definitely going to go for me when I take this off.
Hehehe. Come here you.
Right, who wants a go? No.
Oh, come on.
She’s a little bit too angry now.
Mike Potts has over 40 years' experience with exotic pets,
with an equipment list that points to the sheer range of rescues he might encounter.
This looks like quite a serious amount of kit.
Cable ties and bin liners; an Ikea bag, essential for restraining swans and geese;
torches, binoculars, tape measures for photographing roadkill or measuring footprints.
Once they're out, they're at risk from a whole variety of factors that captivity kind of protects them from.
Absolutely. Yeah. Most animals that are released or escaped into the wild will be dead within a couple of weeks,
the most common reason for that being roadkill.
Microchip scanners. A lot of animals aren’t chipped, but it does tell us whether they’re chipped or not.
Always tend to carry a snake hook. It's got a lot more uses than trying to restrain snakes.
Very good for rooting through undergrowth and bushes and for pulling the branches down so you can reach an iguana.
With an iguana, their main defence is their tail.
They will whip and if they get you it will hurt a lot, potentially even make you bleed.
Picking them up as well, I'd always recommend long sleeves.
If you've got a hoodie, because they will climb. Gloves for sure.
OK, so approach with caution, kind of go side-on so you can control his tail.
Got a bit of a grip on there.
That's it. Tuck that in here so he can’t whip.
And then kind of restrain his legs the best you can.
That’s the issue, you can't feel him with the gloves too well.
Yeah, that is one problem. And then make sure that tail’s kind of tucked under your arm.
Well done.
That's the safest way of doing it. And that's really good.
He'll be getting some basil later. That's his favourite. Basil and grapes.
Do you have a sense of how big private exotic ownership is in this country?
It's certainly popular and I think it's going to get more popular,
especially with the influences of like YouTube and social media and seeing what's going on in America,
how big it is over there.
Most of my animals are rehomes, from people who either can't look after them any more or been dumped, neglected,
working with other sanctuaries, that kind of thing.
Despite – or maybe because of – its popularity, exotic pet ownership is under increasing scrutiny,
with the government cracking down on the sale of species with invasive potential,
and the RSPCA calling the wider picture 'a ticking timebomb'.
Wow. What is this, what type of turtle?
So this is a… it's a slider. So they're on the invasive species list.
These are one of the ones that can survive quite well in our country.
And the problem would be if an owner of ill repute decided they'd had enough of their turtle,
it would be into the local river.
Exactly that. And because of the new laws that are going to be brought in in terms of rehoming them,
if they could come to a safe environment like I have in the back with the pond,
where they can live as much of a natural life as possible without causing any damage to local wildlife,
then that's a much better option than owners feeling forced to place them into our local waterways,
which causes so many problems.
Right. So when I put him down, just cover that area ‘cause I just don't want him going in there, that's the only bit.
In fact can you kind of go over there?
It's tense, isn't it?
OK mate. Right. Watch him just sit there now.
So if you see him lift his tail kind of thing, you don't want to be in shot of him, like with your eyes.
I'm going to have to dive on him aren’t I?
Do you want me to catch him?
Come here. Gotcha. Good boy.
Success.
Although most exotic pets are bred in captivity, the international wildlife trade is hugely problematic,
threatening biodiversity and increasing wildlife crime.
There is a lot of risk here, right? There's a sense that the exotic animal trade could even cause the next pandemic.
Potential risk, particularly with getting animals out of the wild.
But it’s important for conservation that we take them and breed them in captivity
so we can prolong the lifespan of a species.
Isn't that the role of a zoo rather than a private collector like yourself?
Potentially. But if I can provide something on a smaller scale and do my little bit as well and do it properly,
I don't see why that should be viewed as a bad thing.
Wow.
Conservation of endangered species is central to Bristol zoo’s purpose.
Today, head vet Michelle Barrows is performing a routine health check on Feo, a baby aye-aye.
We're going to test him for TB.
TB is obviously a disease that we don't want to get in the collection, and non-human primates are susceptible to it.
Where would he have got TB from?
Well it's obviously very unlikely. I mean, he would have got it from another animal.
So, for example, if he was in contact with another aye-aye that had TB.
Most of our mammals, every time they get a health check, we would do a TB test.
Some primates have Covid vaccinations. Will you vaccinate Feo at all?
We are hoping to have it by the end of the year
and certainly our gorillas and some of our other primates, we are planning on vaccinating them.
We're going to put a microchip in.
The traceability of these animals is vital, right?
Yeah, he will, when he gets older, likely go to another zoo as part of the breeding programme.
It's important that when they're being moved around, that they are identified.
So we just pop it in during the health check, just in the scruff at the back of the neck.
Yep. But so far, all looks good. Healthy little boy.
Ready? Yep.
Vet Charlotte Day takes me out into the zoo, as she checks up on some of her patients in their enclosures.
Obviously a big part of welfare of zoo animals in captivity is trying to replicate the situation
that they would have in the wild.
But this is so different.
Yes. No it is. Yeah. Yeah.
... there’s a lost child down by Kuki’s cabin.
A lot of the animals are provided with a programme of food and games, toys,
you know, lots of different aspects of enrichment.
Though the modern zoo looks to entertain its animals,
many paying customers come purely for entertainment themselves.
Can they really be educated as well?
Zoonotic diseases have had a bit of publicity recently for obvious reasons.
Yes, yeah.
Is that something the zoo industry can sort of harness as a way of explaining to people
some of the risks that are out there?
Yeah. I've been asked before about the fruit bats and the risk of them carrying Ebola and things like that.
And they're not going to because they've been maintained in captivity for several generations.
There is definitely scope for infectious diseases to spread between different animals in a zoo
unless there is appropriate biosecurity in place,
for example, there's foot dips outside the enclosures,
if we're handling animals that we know to be infectious we’ll quarantine them and use appropriate protective gear
and things like that.
I wanted to understand how biosecurity and the ethics of medicating animals
rubbed up against the desire to give them as natural a life as possible.
There are reasons why animals might be distressed for a certain period,
sometimes you will give long acting tranquillisers, for example,
if you've got to hospitalise an animal away from its group.
Some of the complaints around zoos are around some of these animals
and the way that they exhibit signs of stress. Is medicating them the answer?
You know, I think with the bigger animals and the more intelligent animals,
obviously we have to have a good reason for keeping them in zoos.
It's obviously not acceptable to use drugs as an alternative to providing the right kind of care.
I guess if you had an animal that you thought would benefit from it, then you certainly would consider it.
All aspects of these animals' lives are closely monitored and controlled, even into old age.
Blondie is a geriatric golden-headed lion tamarin, today being tested for diabetes.
To speak incredibly brutally, there is a great deal of care and attention paid to an animal whose value is low.
We feel at the moment he is having a good quality of life.
But if we find that his welfare is affected and he declines, then we would euthanise him.
Oh, there we go.
We need to consider cost. But ultimately, you know, in the same way, when somebody takes on a pet,
you're committed to give that animal as good a quality of life as you can for the whole of its lifespan.
Wakey wakey.
Back in Lancashire, Mike invites me to his home to meet the exotics in his collection.
How many different animals do you have?
Between 30 to 40 different species. Wow.
But that includes invertebrates as well.
Raccoon dogs, or tanukis, are labelled 'the escapologists of the mammal world'.
They are also well adapted to thrive in the UK and as such are no longer legal to buy or sell here.
This is Tifa. She was caught after she was abandoned.
She's virtually blind, but as you can see, she's very friendly.
He's less friendly and often defensive of her. Isn’t he? Yes, he is.
It's been suggested that the raccoon dogs could be the next invasive species to take over this country.
It's a very real problem and they have the potential.
It's difficult to know what numbers we're talking about. And we’ve been involved in several cases
where tanukis have been spotted, and we've been successful in some and unsuccessful in others.
So there is a wild population out there?
Yeah, I think it's quite likely that there are some out there.
Does not exotic pet ownership make that more likely rather than less likely?
The more animals that are kept, the greater the risk. There's bound to be.
But the main risk comes from people feeling that they don't have any other options but to release them.
Most people might be watching this and would just say, just have a cat. Have a rabbit. Come on.
The two most invasive species worldwide are cats and dogs,
feral populations of both are decimating wildlife throughout the whole world.
Should we just get rid of pets altogether? That would solve all the problems, wouldn’t it?
That's not the line that our organisation is taking.
There's a ban on breeding listed invasive species, currently.
Does it just push it underground?
But I would imagine it's still going on.
And I would imagine there is in some ways, more demand for something that's seen as being a rarer commodity.
You can see why the government might be cracking down on an animal like this.
I can understand it to some extent.
There was never an issue previously. In fact, the amount of tanukis actually in captivity was few and far between.
Since the ban came in, I think some breeders were less scrupulous in pushing the sales of them very, very cheaply
on to people that didn't really know what it was they were getting into.
I think she’s having enough now, to be honest with you.
Are people playing politics with the situation though, because it looks good to say,
‘yeah, we're clamping down on raccoon dogs’, and I get a strong sense that it's not working.
Ultimately, I don't think it actually improves the situation for invasive species control at all.
But it looks like it does on paper. And sometimes I think that's really seen as more important to some people.
It’s hard to argue that any kept animal lives a natural life,
but the responsibility is surely on owners to provide an exemplary level of care.
Whilst controls can be placed on zoos to ensure they meet these high standards,
policing the world of private ownership is a tougher task,
and may even cause the very problems the legislation is designed to prevent.