Interesting subject, can you give some examples of abuse which people think is cute? Not exotics but I was recently discussing with a colleague the horrendous genetic problems so many German Shepards now have and all in the name of aesthetics for dog shows.

Sorry I don't use instagram, but you definitely deserve support!

yes !! the topic of unethical breeding is also very interesting (and it exists with exotic pets, when people breed tigers or snakes to have specific colors when they are tied to genetical malformations that considerably hinder their quality of life)

The main problem is that most of exotic pets are simply not fit for captive life. Most people don't know them well enough to spot abuse/signs of stress or pain, which leads pictures to be shared, encouraging more people to look into adopting "unusual animals" (for example, that one monkey haircut meme shows a monkey that's been anesthetized, and the famous caracal "big floppa" is morbidly obese, and that's not even discussing the fact that a caracal should certainly not be living in a house like a cat)

That's just scratching the surface, but there are also terrible issue with captive parrots, for example. Despite being popular pets, most captive parrots live miserable lives (a real isssue when some of them can live more than 80 years !). In fact, even buying captive bred exotic pets encourages animal trafficking :(
In general, the average person will never be able to care correctly for a wild animal, finding vets is hard, they are impossible to rehome, and their ownership encourages poaching. Yet all of it is glamorized on social media :((

Sorry for that really long message haha, I encourage you to look into it if you're interested (it's...quite a deep topic), after all my field is graphic design and not animal welfare, so there are tons of issues i had to leave aside.
and thanks a lot for your support !

I sooo agree to you.
My skin is crawling when I see people go around sharing a video of like, a monkey doing things that normaly humans do- wearing clothes, use a phone, ride a bike, dance etc etc.. how is that good for the animal?
I don't use instagram tho I'll share the link <3

Thank you so much 💕 !
Honestly the concept of pet monkeys as a whole deeply disturbs me... how can one expect to give a happy life to such intelligents animals, with high needs for social contact and enrichment ? And how does one ethically acquire a monkey?
At one point people will just have to admit that they don't love animals, but just the status that comes woth owning them :(

I actually wrote a lot about the dangers of humanizing animals in my memoire ! It's everywhere in popular media and leads people to think that what is good for us is also good for animals :(

Thanks for the reply, yes its a really grim topic and one I admit I know very little about. Part of the problem is too many people in Western society at least have no interest in a general education and seem to be led by opinion-formers and fads, the former of whom will do anything for attention.

As an aside all those different colour-morphs of pythons have always looked weird to me, the natural scale pattern is much more aesthetically pleasing. Actually I recently started watching the 'SaveAFox' youtube channel and while gorgeous and striking a lot of those colour-morph foxes seem to have similar genetic problems. Also fur-farms seriously need to be shut down.

You're welcome ! It's the reason why i focused on instagram (even though the problem exists everywhere). It just keeps on feeding us with out of context images with no explanations, and it's so easy to show only the good side of things...

I won't lie, i do find some stunning, but this has no place if it creates any sort of easily avoidable pain for them :(
If i'm not mistaken, these things are often bound to happen when heavily selection is made only for aesthetic purposes. I assume they don't care for unhealthy critters since they're meant to end up as fur coats...

Like everything else the internet is a double-edged sword, I've never really used instagram or really most social media so I can't really comment on it.

"I won't lie, i do find some stunning, but this has no place if it creates any sort of easily avoidable pain for them :("

Agreed, these are living creatures we're talking about.

"If i'm not mistaken, these things are often bound to happen when heavily selection is made only for aesthetic purposes. I assume they don't care for unhealthy critters since they're meant to end up as fur coats..."

I haven't looked that closely into it as I find the whole thing just upsets me, but yes I suspect its a similar issue that European royal families used to have with all that marrying close relatives.