'Stop buying wild animals on TikTok as pets'

People are being urged not to buy animals "on a whim" from social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram by the owner of a wildlife centre, which rescues exotic animals kept as pets.

Lindsay McKenna, from Wildside Exotic Rescue in Herefordshire, said she had 25 requests each week from people "desperate" to get rid of their exotic animals.

The centre could easily have 5,000 animals with the amount of demand for their services, she added, but, in order to keep numbers manageable, they could only look after 200, which included zebras, raccoons, monkeys and mountain lions.

"There aren't very many second-chance places for these animals when their [owners] change their mind," she said.

"They either get released into the countryside, or killed or are highly neglected in small cages.

"There are lots of pumas loose in the wild and I assume they were once people's pets."

It is legal to keep wild animals as pets, even those considered dangerous, under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976.

However new regulations which come into force on 6 April will require all private keepers of any primates to have a licence or face a fine or even jail.

McKenna said these changes could not come fast enough.

"The last marmosets that were brought in [to us] were bought by her owner wearing a pink dress and nappies, taken off her mother pre-weaning, and was fed a diet of marshmallows and dried fruits," she said.

"Another vet alerted us that parents had bought their son a monkey as a 10th birthday present.

"The monkey was in the boy's bedroom and the parents didn't know anything about how to care for the monkey.

"It was in a hamster cage in the bedroom and the child had been feeding it bubble-gum and biscuits. The only reason they moved it on was because it badly bit the boy's fingers."

She added that the costs of staying open for the rescue centre were high, with electric bills sitting at about £2,000 each month.

"It costs £400 a week for fruit and veg alone and then I buy in whole deer for the eleven mountain lions, which is about £300 every 3 weeks," McKenna added.

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