Super little furry animals, funny fish, clumsy frogs etc etc etc ...

Tuesday 22 April 2008

Wild Dunnarts In Pet Shop

The dunnart is a mouse-sized marsupial native to Australia that feeds almost exclusively upon insects and other creepy crawlies.

You can see this isn't a domesticated pet. And that enclosure is far too small, otherwise it wouldn't be running up and down and jumping at the sides...

This is the famous Australian "piatkus mouse" (my name for it: does anyone know what a "piatkus" actually IS??)... the female rambles a good 5 miles a night in search of a mate... at the end of the annual 2 week breeding season the males are so exhausted they all DIE... they are quite unafraid of battling with funnel webs, and frequently crackle a crunchy scorpion for breakfast!


6 comments:

Bimbimbie said...

This makes me sad seeing them in a pet shop. I never knew they were available as pets ... should be running freeeeeeeee :(

Gledwood said...

yes definitely. i've heard of them being kept as pets... but those are definitely WILD specimens.

the only humane way I can see of domesticating wild rodents etc is of catching a pregnant female, and taming and breeding the babies, who hopefully won't spend their entire lives going nuts and trying to escape!

i heard the ordinary golden hamster (like my avatar picture) took many generations to calm down in captivity. which is hard to believe now, because though still very vigorous in captivity they are exceedingly tame even WITHOUT being specially handled as babies

The Misadventures Of Me said...

Beans are silly. Wild animals that are nots domesticated, like us wonderful kittys shouldnt be bothereds with! *hiss* at them I do!!

And yes beans are just rotten for blamings us for yackin when we didn'ts!

Gledwood said...

Yackin? What on earth is that??!?

Bimbimbie said...

Since I saw this clip the other night it's been playing on my mind. I really don't understand why some humans think its ok to take anything from the wild and cage it. Be it small like a mouse or big like an orangutan or bear. The more rarer the more exotic the more money ... the human animal can be one sad sicko:(

Gledwood said...

that enclosure is far too small... I don't get why they want to keep it in a pastic cube just so it can run about all over driftwood and jump repeatedly at the sides thinking "where on earth am I? my old territory was 5x7 miles? this is 1metre by 1metre (at best)...

... they could have at least put in a couple of exercise wheels for the poor fattailed, poppy-eyed swines