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Hoofed Mammals
The larger of the two orders, Artiodactyla, is a widely varied group, with species living in virtually every terrestrial biome on the planet, and ranging in size from the 18½-foot-tall giraffe to the 20-inch-long lesser mouse deer. The most common purpose for keeping these animals in captivity seems to be for their use in 'canned hunts'; a canned hunt is an activity in which so-called sportsmen pay a fee to shoot a captive animal, often while it is contained in a small enclosure or holding area. The mighty hunter can then brag to his friends about the animal he has killed and have a morbid trophy to hang on his wall. Big cats, bears, wolves, and other animals are slaughtered in this same fashion, but the hoofed animals tend to be seen more often, particularly in areas where the law allows them to be raised for their meat. In most states, canned hunts are illegal, but the law is difficult to enforce. Other hunting operations keep the animals in large, multi-acre enclosures to simulate an authentic exotic hunting trip, but the basic idea is the same -- pay for what you shoot, and with it comes the bragging rights. Unregulated exotic animal ranching has also led to the naturalization of certain species in parts of the US, disrupting the native ecosystem. Whether the motivation is sadism, insecurity, or greed, the welfare of the animals is not, and has never been, a consideration. Neither is conservation; a number of ranches list on their websites the animals they regularly provide, but they boast that they can procure any hoofed animal a customer wants to kill, even endangered species; recent research into the origin of these animals has demonstrated that they are oftentimes zoo surplus. One wonders how this is possible, but it is only a matter of having, or not having, the right paperwork; documents are often forged, and if there is no way to make it legal, it's simply done in secret.
Some quick internet research found the following species commonly available at hunting ranches in Texas: elk, mule deer, white-tailed deer, fallow deer, red deer, axis deer, sika deer, mouflon, Dall's sheep, Barbary sheep, Iranian red sheep, American bison, water buffalo, wildebeest, blackbuck, nilgai, Thompson's gazelle, scimitar-horned oryx, springbok, gemsbok, and European wild boar; most also advertise turkeys and several species of domestic and hybrid sheep. Elk and wild boar seem to be the most popular species, however the interstate trade in elk may have wider implications than blatant animal cruelty and exploitation. In recent years, an alarming number of Rocky Mountain elk have become infected with chronic wasting disease, an affliction affecting not only elk, but also mule deer, white-tailed deer, and Wyoming moose. Research uncovered an elk ranching operation in South Dakota where the herds are infected with chronic wasting disease, on a property adjoining a national park and mere miles from a state park where the majority of South Dakota's wild elk live. That there is a connection between chronic wasting disease and human prion diseases like Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is unlikely, but research is still being conducted; there is a definite risk to humans coming into contact with elk and other animals infected with bovine tuberculosis, however -- the most common of the three forms of TB, capable of infecting most mammals. TB was rare in wild deer prior to the mid-1990s, but it has become more common, and is frequently seen in captive deer and elk.
Hunting is but one industry that slaughters wildlife; exotic meats wax and wane in their popularity, but they maintain a steady market presence in one form or another. Thousands of endangered American bison are ranched for meat production, with the majority of young bulls living out their short lives in manure-filled feed lots. Deer and elk meat, and meat from several African and Asian antelope species are also readily available, as is that of the reindeer, or caribou. These deer of the Arctic tundra have been raised for centuries for their meat and for use as beasts of burden.
Alan Green begins his book, Animal Underworld: Inside America's Black Market for Rare and Endangered Species, with the story of Amber and Aaron, giraffes born at the prestigious Smithsonian National Zoo. While the zoo told one story to the public, they began making arrangements for the sale of each animal mere days after its birth. At the time of Green's writing, Amber, the older of the two, had been sold to an Ohio drive-through zoo known to ship giraffes and other animals overseas, most notably to Japanese firms implicated in the illegal international shipment and butchering of gorillas. Shipping even young giraffes isn't easy, but it also isn't rare. Zoos have come under public scrutiny in the past for euthanizing their surplus animals; now they sell them or give them away to people who will turn them into steaks and trophy mounts. Green reports of a rare "blunder" in 1998, in which the AZA accidentally made publicly available their AZA Animal Exchange, a listing of animals for sale and trade within the accredited zoo system, which included at that time "...six hundred mammals, nearly four hundred reptiles, thousands of fish, hundreds of birds, and a variety of invertebrates."
Not all captive artiodactyls face such overtly sinister fates; like so many other wild species, many simply languish in captivity as a result of the exotic pet trade. Small deer, like the popular Reeve's muntjac, are not the only ones bought and sold to be pets; the mid-sized and multi-colored fallow deer are extremely popular, and larger species are not as uncommon as they ought to be. In November 2006, a captive white-tailed buck killed his 43-year-old owner in upstate New York; November is typically the breeding season (rut) for this species, making them particularly dangerous, especially when confined.
The camelids are a group of ungulates possessing soft pads in the place of hooves; llamas, alpacas, and old world camels are all members of this family. Llamas and alpacas are extremely common as pets throughout the country, and alpacas are even advertised on television for their wool production. The surefooted animals are frequently seen in farm animal rescues nationwide. Dromedary camels are also quite common in captivity in the United States, but they are most frequently seen as beasts of burden and meat producers in North Africa, the Middle East, and India. The camels were so easily domesticated that there are thought to be no wild dromedaries left in their native range. Only in Australia can wild herds be found, where the desert-dwellers were once imported and became feral. This is one case in which a feral animal has had little effect on the ecosystem; camels' soft feet are easy on the landscape, and they have done no noticeable damage to the native flora. The bactrian camel fills the same role in China and Mongolia as the dromedary does further west; it was once much more widespread in the wild, with a range extending into central Kazakhstan, but today wild populations are restricted to only a few, small areas. Bactrians are also less common and more expensive as captives in North America, as are the vicuñas and guanacos of South America.
A hippopotamus is a difficult animal to keep in captivity, due in part to its need for large quantities of water and the volume of waste it produces, but that didn't stop a doctor in Escondido, California from trying to keep a pygmy hippo in his back yard. He in fact kept the animal for about ten years, during which time she did not have adequate shade and could not fully submerse herself in water, resulting in cracked, discolored skin and bloody sores. How the doctor came to obtain a rare, 500-pound hippopotamus for which he had no permit remained unknown, but some speculate that it was the same animal that 'mysteriously disappeared' from the San Diego Zoo, an institution to which the doctor had made a sizable donation. The hippo now lives at an accredited sanctuary in San Diego county.
The Artiodactyla are even-toed ungulates, while the Perrisodactyla are odd-toed. The most familiar of these are the horses. Wild horses are found in many parts of the world, but perhaps the most striking of these are the three species of zebra. Zebras are common in the North American animal trade, and they are sometimes bred to domestic horses to produce a ridiculous hybrid called a 'zorse'. While they are essentially little, striped horses, zebras are wild creatures and have never been successfully domesticated as beasts of burden or riding mounts. Kicking and biting are common behaviors, and they have even been known to kill their own kind. Zebras can also be killed in canned hunts in Texas and other parts of the country.
Other wild horses and wild asses are in trouble; the Przewalski's horse is extinct in the wild, with only a few captive herds perpetuating the species. The African and Asiatic wild asses, and the kiang, a wild ass from Tibet, are losing ground. Feral horses like the North American mustang are considerably more common, but they are under pressure from groups bent on 'management'. When Spanish conquerors first landed in North America, they brought horses with them, and those that escaped became the the ancestors of modern-day mustangs. Today their herds are found in the dry scrublands of eastern Oregon, northern California, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, and western
Colorado. They are monitored by the Bureau of Land Management, along with feral burros in California, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah. BLM officials feel they need to keep the herds in check, which they accomplish by rounding up the animals and auctioning them off to the highest bidder. Buyers are allowed to purchase the animals on a provisional basis, and a minimal system of checks is in place to keep the horses and burros from being made into dog food. The system is, of course, imperfect. About 28,000 mustangs and burros live in captivity as a result of BLM adoptions; some adapt well and can even be ridden, while others retain their wild temperament. The return of large predators like wolves and brown bears would certainly aid in the control of wild horse and burro populations, as would a castration and release program. Such a program might also alleviate concerns that BLM is not so much managing the herds as it is selling horses and burros. Of course, such idealism and government policy rarely mix.
While they look quite different, the rhinoceroses of Africa and Asia are actually relatives of horses. All rhino species are endangered, as their horns are used as ornaments and in traditional eastern medicine. The Indian, Javan, and Sumatran rhinos are in very real danger of extinction, and are quite difficult to raise in captivity thanks to the diversity of their diets. Similarly, the African black rhinoceros has been nearly wiped out, although captive husbandry efforts have been more successful. White rhinos have been bred so successfully in captivity that American zoos have generated a surplus, and now they can be found at filthy roadside wildlife parks like the Olympic Game Farm in Sequim, Washington.
Tapirs are the final group within Perissodactyla, with three species found in Central and South America and a fourth in Southeast Asia. These rain forest animals are not unheard of in the exotic animal trade, but they are more common as wild pets within their native ranges. They are routinely shuffled through the animal markets of Managua and other Latin American centers of commerce, where they are valued for their meat as well as their appeal to animal collectors. All four species are considered endangered due to hunting and habitat loss.
Posted on January 8, 2007
