There's some sort of "exotic pet" start-up here. It may take 10 years of development, but the research costs would be relatively low. I wonder what the ethics of that would be.
Breeding animals as pets is gently problematic when there are so many unwanted animals that would make very good pets.
Traditional breeding is notoriously bad at avoiding genetic defects and temperament problems. Mutts avoid a bunch of those.
If you charge enough you could fund humane death for surplus animals (tricky to persuade people this is a good thing) or better animal shelters, which would help reduce some of the problems.
> Traditional breeding is notoriously bad at avoiding genetic defects and temperament problems. Mutts avoid a bunch of those.
A large number of mutts are also either born or placed into bad situations and end up developing social and temperamental issues as a result, which become increasingly difficult to overcome the older they get.
They already sell those as pets, as you can see by googling "Russian pet foxes". Unlike a lot of exotic pets, it seems that they do fine as long as there is a fenced-in backyard and a local veterinarian who is willing to work with foxes.
But how about other exotic domesticated species. Squirrels or possums or tigers? My original question was a bit facetious, although I am interested in the ethics, and it does look like this is something that will happen one day.
I don't know about domesticating tigers. Look at house are which have need domesticated for thousands of years. Most cat owners have stories of their pet cat going berserk on them. Now imagine a 400 pound tiger going berserk. The owner would not have a chance.
A meat eater who benefits from experimentation on species that are very closely related to him, namely chimps, wonders about the ethics of breeding pets.
I'm glad you brought up ethics, as it was absent from the article. If you believe that God put other species on this planet as a resource for humans, there's no limit to the creative possibilities. Otherwise it's hard to argue that human exploitation of other species can be ethical at this point in our technological development.
