The Ethics of Owls

I was reading a story in the (London) Daily Mirror website this week about a little-known crisis in the UK: people who bought pet owls during the Harry Potter craze are now getting bored with the birds and dumping them off on people who run owl sanctuaries – or just abandoning their former pets in the wild. I was surprised to learn that there were no laws in the UK about owning an owl or keeping it as a pet; in the U.S. you’ll need specialized permits to have any raptor as a pet, and a lot of the states won’t allow such a thing. Even more surprising (at least to me) was the idea that you could just buy one; I immediately found myself wondering if there are owl breeders somewhere in Europe who raise broods of the birds for sale, if there are exotic pet stores that carry such animals, or if people just go out into the countryside and catch their own. But this isn’t the first case of movie-related pet fads coming and going that I’ve read about, and it struck me that there’s a larger ethical issue involved here…

Every time there’s a new movie featuring any particularly appealing animal, people will start trying to purchase one for themselves; marine biologists of my acquaintance tell me that this can even extend to seals, dolphins, penguins, and other creatures that common sense would dictate are not practical pets. In cases like the “101 Dalmatians” movies this can mean a huge surge in popularity of a featured breed of dogs, followed by a huge number of spotted puppies being abandoned when the novelty wore off and people realized that Dalmatians don’t really make good family pets. Things have gotten completely out of hand in cases like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies, which had the same effect on turtles despite the fact that pet turtles don’t eat pizza, wield traditional weapons, beat people up, or offer witty repartee while doing so, and anybody with a room-temperature IQ already knew that. The question begged by all of this is why anybody is selling these animals under such conditions – and do they have an ethical obligation not to?

On the one hand, a pet store is a business like any other, and not selling your customers products that they wish to purchase is not only a violation of the first law of business, but also not a good strategy. If you can obtain animals for $50 and sell them for $500 you would probably want to, and if you can do so without endangering the lives or well-being of the animals it would be hard to say there was anything wrong with doing that. Dalmatians are considered high energy and high maintenance pets, but are also highly trainable and rarely aggressive, making them good rescue dogs and excellent companions for runners and other very active humans; it seems only reasonable to let anyone who actually wants one (and didn’t just see the movie and get ideas) purchase such a dog. The same could be said for pugs, St. Bernards, and various breeds of cat which have all appeared in popular movies. If somebody wants a specific pet and can take care of it without endangering the animal or breaking any local laws, should a merchant really be expected to refuse the sale?

By the same token, there are some types of animal that are difficult to care for without specialized training and facilities, or are at least really inconvenient. A large owl will need at least a 20-foot aviary, with room to flap its wings five times before settling onto a perch, as well as specialized food, sanitation and medical care, just to take the immediate example. Rabbits don’t like to be held an cuddled like cats do; they’re a prey species and tend to freak out around 200-pound apex predators like humans. Ducklings and chicks grow up to be ducks and chickens, and are no longer as cute as they looked on Easter morning. Even common pets like hamsters and gerbils sometimes take up more time and effort than people are willing to expend, and wind up being abandoned. And regrettably, there’s often no way for a pet store owner to tell the difference, even if they were willing to sabotage their own business and risk destroying their family’s well-being along with the pet animals’…

So I have to ask: should pet stores be required to determine if customers can reasonably care for the animals they are buying? Should we pass more legislation governing who can purchase what kinds of animals? How do we enforce such laws and regulations if we do? And who gets to decide whether a specific pet owner is sufficiently capable of caring for a specific animal? Can we require people to take state-approved training classes before purchasing a pet – and would that help? Or should we just accept that some people can take care of a European Eagle-Owl, a mountain lion and a badger without endangering either the animals or themselves, while other people will be savaged by anything larger than a Yorkshire terrier, and just let pet lovers and business owners make their own decisions?

It’s worth thinking about…