This in response to hobgoblin's posting about using the koala as an animal model organism:

What native animal from your home country would you consider having as a pet, or more interesting, perhaps, what native animal would you never consider having as a pet?


For me, I'd never have a red kangaroo. First of all I'd need to have fences over 5m high. Then, they have very large sharp claws, and when they have a fight, males are capable of disembowelling a person.
As to one I would like to have, possibly a ring-tail possum or an echidna.
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They're so cute!! but no Koala? or duck billed platypus?

I'd adopt a pika or flying squirrel from Hokkaido. No so keen on the suzumibachi (giant hornet)

Never:

Full of fleas and dirty. Noisy sex live.


Too big, too aggressive.


Don't like them, have no tree in my flat


Perhaps:

Small, easy to keep, only one mood, beautiful.


Tetrix feeds on moss, cute and small

the Canadian Lynx…..this one’s got fancy snowshoes for feet….a real big beautiful kitty….miaow..

the best pet for the winter…very economical- you don’t need to feed it for about 7months…

And it's satisfied with you if hungry some day....

..you just need to follow the laboratory safety guide.....the chapter on simple precautionary measures for raising laboratory black bears...guess you don't need any for your bugs...

Ideal pet for the modern person. Need to be away for a week or a month? No problem with an Axolotl. Just keep it in the fridge at 16 C and your pet will keep till you come back.

... 16 C but that's summer temp!!! Does it have identity issues- am I a fish or a lizard? I guess no separation anxiety...where do you dig all these pernese?

16 C might be summer from your part of the world, casandra, but for me, it's the middle of winter...

Still, thinking about your bear, I'd have to feed it year-round. Good thing I know where there's a huge supply of undergraduates...

alot of people have axoltl in this country... they make great pets but you can only get them in pink and black

When i was a kid we had a number of these:


Very cute and if you handle them often there's no fear of getting bitten!

As pluck genetic engineers, this challenge must be answered. Starting with an albino strain of axoltls, we should introduce pathways for pigment production. Every colour of the rainbow, including fluorescence.

And don't forget that it likes to play with its food....we have to teach it some proper table manners, really....

ps...16 degrees is called mid-winter there, eh? here it's called mid-winter for Wimps......... ...I'm just sour-graping swanny....I'll gladly exchange your mid-winter for mine...

Take the axolotl, if you don't want it anymore you can eat it and not vice versa.

aww......how can you eat your pet even out of pure scientific interest? But you've eaten your bugs, right dr H?

Uh, I wondered for a long time. As a part of Europe, we don't really have endemites. Our two national symbol animals aren't useful as pets at all!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wisent.jpg

This one's a HUUUGE WILD COW. If you ever go to Bialowieza, there's a restaurant where they serve wisent steaks (the population is legally regulated when a surplus of wisents is born). You can eat that. Not really soft, the meat. The animal, a very bad pet, unless you own a forest.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Stork

This one is actually almost a pet in the countryside. Not domesticated, but it lives near humans and is believed to bring luck. So people put an old tire on the roof, and if they're lucky, a pair of storks makes a nest in the tire and comes back every spring.
But again, a bad pet, unless you own a house in the countryside.

But at least they bring babies with them every year....

probably one of our more famous official emblems:



tightly-tied to our history (the fur trade), they shld make good pets- highly industrious and perfect advertising tools for the orthodentists...




and we do eat their tails for fun:

Exchange, no way, but you're most welcome to visit our wonderful shores. We love visitors from the frozen wastelands of the north... You might be able to take a tour of Antipodean Bioforummers! I think there are a few of the states represented here (NSW, Queensland and Victoria at least).

Oh, here's another native animal I'd never want as a pet. The cassowary is a close relative of the emu, but it really has personality issues! Go into its territory and it's likely to charge you (top speed up to 50 km/h), knock you over (height up to 2 m, weight to 60 kg, jumps up to 1.5 m) and start kicking - and it has very serious claws (up to 13 cm long)! But check out the head-dress!
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Oooooh, so THAT'S what they mean when they talk about looking for beaver, and going for a piece of tail. I thought people were just being rude!!

I would like a Panda in my house if I get a fund and care-taker to keep one.

they used to have these in my grand-uncles' paddi fiels, the stork, not the mega-cow. My mum has eaten it in a curry.

Better not mention it if you are in Poland! Here it would be as shocking as eating a neighbour's dog... If we'd have a "holy animal", a stork would be a good candidate

For New Zealand I guess the Kea is a real border case: One the one hand intelligent and prying (and beautiful), on the other hand too prying and destructive.
Wikipedia writes:
"The Kea are attracted by the prospect of food scraps from human habitation. Their curiosity leads them to peck and carry away unguarded items of clothing, or to pry apart rubber parts of cars - to the entertainment and annoyance of human observers. They are often described as "cheeky"."
Who comes to my mind with all this characteristics?

...well, that's certainly not me.......but this is YOU:



this invader's primary target now- our dearest maple tree....

Hm, maple syrup is tasty , but I'm not Asian.

hmm..but the analogy is appropriate I think.......

... should we get you a bowl of milk, casandra?

We have similar destructive habits from our sulphur-crested cockatoos, but they do it to sharpen their beaks!!

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Can I see these in Sydney?- I"m passing through at the end of April on my way to New Zealand, my only stop in Australia. They're much cuter than our resident destructo-birds; damn crows were having a mardi gras at the rubbish in my street again this morning .

milk? ppfftt...bring me a whetstone and some honing steel .....speaking of a not-so-destructo birdo, we have this little winged rascal:



Canada Jay aka Grey Jay, Whickey Jack, Camp Robber, screams almost as good as our dear Celine....

Oh, but if you think that our beloved beaver is just a piece of tail then I'd surely be a-hoppin and a-kickin mad just like your kangaroo.......I've got to list down all its attributes then...we can start with the teeth......

Are they anything like the blue jay? (Go Jays!) rofl
(My cousin's from Tronna / Nagra ...)

But does anything scream like Sealion Dye-On?

I wondered what the whetstone was for!

I know it doesn't compare with your national over-sized rodent's tail, but the platypus' tail is pretty good... Did you know that the first platypus sample (dead and stuffed) that was sent back to England was considered a fake, that it had been stitched together form the body of an otter, a duck and a beaver. Some of the esteemed gentlemen of the Royal Society even had their doubts about the live specimens!!

and I wondered what the milk was for.....how about this swanny, do you know that the beaver's tail spend soo much time in the water that in the 19th century, the RC church considered it a fish so we could eat it during the lenten season? ...gosh and they really ate it?

Yup they did. Back then, they ate pretty much everything that was moving

Everything you don't like to eat is ingredient of an invention, made just for this purpose: sausages.
Except perhaps platypus parts, I guess a bad idea because of the venom spurs (except perhaps Darwin how tasted almost everything).

I have a native animal, named Steve. when he grows up, he'll be bright yellow with 4 long dark stripes. this pic was 6 months ago; he's still relatively small, but growing quickly.

hmmm, I think a skunk http://www.whistleblowersblog.org/uploads/...nk%20Babies.jpg would be my least-desired native species.

and hey, I've seen axolotls in all shades of green; do you really not have anything between albinos and black ones?

..the RCs or the europeans in general? But I still prefer our new version of beaver's tails...

and I wonder if he'd taste good:



our famous Whiarton Willie....

A lab beaver? Or beaver with winter fur?

For bizarre food read this, quite interesting

Medieval humans, I guess Still I think that ancient Greeks and Romans were even more... omnivorous...
Why is it that when you get students and scientists on the forum, the topic shifts so easily to food?

oh yeah... ....our next best obsession: food....we can directly or indirectly link everything and everyone to it....

My goodness, Steve," said Little Red Riding Hood "what biiiig eyes you have!"
All the better to sssseee you with, my dear."

Nice. What type is he?

fantastic

I have two corns! a carolina and a reverse okatee and yeah the axoltl ovr here isnt very colourful

But you can eat the axolotls too, if necessary.

I've this pet:



But not native one here, but a re-breed from a dealer.

and it's got more hair than you ...is this the famous beaver-eating spider?

Predominantly I have it (or her/him) to awe cheeky hecklers and brats

some pet owner you are if you can't even tell if it's a he or a she...although an insect ignoramus, I bet I have sharper eyes than you do

Actually it is not an insect, but looking at the voracity I guess it is a.... Hmm, use your own imagination

it's the non-insect equivalent of a jerk and jerks are usually............