Masynn Acheson – reporter
In almost every pet store, you encounter a section for reptiles, rodents, fish, or birds – both the animals and their supplies. Even at Walmart, there is an entire aisle dedicated to those animals among the dog and cat food. Somehow, even though those pets are surprisingly common, it is incredibly difficult to find a vet for any animal considered to be an “exotic” animal within a reasonable driving distance. An exotic animal is defined as “anything that is not one of seven domesticated species: dogs, cats, horses, pigs, cows, sheep, or goats” in an article by Texas A&M University’s Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.
What is interesting however, is that there are reports going back two thousand years to Ancient Rome where rabbits were kept in hutches, French monks keeping them in 600 A.D. as a meat substitute during Lent, and many other examples in an article published by Oxford University in 2018. This is not the only case of murky timelines, where several species of birds like pigeons and doves have been domesticated and kept by humans for hundreds of years. World War II had several pigeons that were even given medals in honor of their important roles in communication.
While reptiles and fish can be understandable for hesitation or some slightly harder to find care for, how is it that birds and rabbits, at the least, are not standard learning in veterinary practices. This also brings the question of why some clinics only take dogs or dogs and cats. Especially in the case of emergency vets for a life-threatening emergency, most only take dogs with one or two willing to take cats. The only place in the state of Kansas that takes an emergency visit for a rabbit is the 24-hour clinic at the University of Kansas in Manhattan, KS.
Not only is it difficult to find a vet that takes exotic animals to begin with, then you worry about limited time windows and higher prices for medication and visits themselves. On average, a visit to the vet for a cat or dog can be around $25-$250 while an exotic can start at $100 according to a recent article published by Dogster. Food is more expensive, pet supplies are more expensive, vet visits are more expensive and harder to find, and to top it all off there is a disturbing amount of exotic pet products that either do not work or are detrimental to your pet’s health.
For how long humans and so-called “exotic” animals have lived side by side, it seems right to try and accommodate those animals and to make services more available or prevalent just as much as other kinds of pets. Some may be considered pests or wild animals but forget that it puts a double standard on their own furred friends and the animals they descend from. Dogs came from wolves like cats descended from wild cats, like a holland lop rabbit came from wild rabbits. Double standards are not okay for people, so why are they okay for animals?
Sources:
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2018-02-14-history-domestication-rabbit%E2%80%99s-tale