Can you donate exotic animals to a zoo?

Question

For example, parrots, or large snakes?

Answer 1

It depends on the species, animal (age, health, sex) and the zoo. Mostly they are only interested in animals you can't keep legally as pets anyway. Smaller zoos might consider it, but no-one wants a 20-yr old African Grey parrot or a middle-aged Burmese python.

Lots of people seem to think that they can give away parrots of snakes to zoos, but most species the zoo has no interest in. I worked in London zoo for a while and we used to get a lot of random phone calls. They have a policy of not taking anything in from the public, mostly because of disease control - if a pet python introduced boid inclusion body disease into a zoo population they could lose a lot of valuable and endangered snakes.

The only time I have seen a zoo accept pet animals was some very rare species that had been confiscated by the airport authorities and couldn't be sent back to their country.

It's definitely not something you could rely on if you wanted to get rid of a pet. There are specialist exotic rescue centres (http://www.proteus.uk.net/ ) that are quite good. If someone's really stuck a local animal shelter might take something on, but often they have little experience with exotics and will pass it on to another organisation.

Answer 2

It depends upon the zoo. Some will take them in (after thorough health checks) but most won't because they get loads of people every day calling and asking the same things. Sorry, but zoos are not dumping grounds for people who think a certain creature is "cool", only to find out that it's too much work, too much of a bother too noisy, bites or gets too big for them to take care of.
Most animal shelters will take in exotic pets.

Answer 3

depends on the zoo but you might want to check and see if there is a shelter close by

Answer 4

im sure it would depend on the zoo and the animal.....but there are usually rescue groups that will take them....