Exotic animals can be alluring. Sugar gliders have big, adorable eyes and tigers and snakes are tantalizingly dangerous.

But the exotic animal industry takes wild animals from their natural environments and trying to domesticate an exotic animal can be dangerous for both animal and human.

Exotic animals need special care -- like specific diets, a controlled climate, and miles to roam -- that few households can give. When people realize they can't properly care for their exotic pet, they sometimes release the pet into an unnatural habitat, endangering neighbors and the animal.
These wild animals can carry diseases like herpes and hepatitis A. In some tragic incidents, these "pets" have directly harmed their owners, like the recent case of a Florida toddler killed by her family's python. Wild animals belong in the wild. For humans and animals, pledge not to support the exotic pet industry and not to buy exotic pets.