Pet trends for exotic species

Katherine Quesenberry, DVM, MPH, DABVP (Avian), chief medical officer, senior veterinarian, specialist in avian medicine and service head of avian and exotic medicine for Schwarzman Animal Medical Center in New York, New York, recently offered her insights on exotic pets and the conditions that commonly affect them, in a dvm360 interview. In this video, she speaks about the exotic pet species that she often sees as a clinician and which animals have become more popular with owners as well as some that have become less common than they were previously.

The following is a transcript of the video:

dvm360: What trends are you seeing with exotic pet ownership and adoption?

Katherine Quesenberry, DVM, MPH, DABVP (Avian): I've been in this a long time, in this field, and it certainly has changed through the years that I've been there. Birds are always popular. Certainly, the species of birds that we see have changed a bit through the years because when I first started, the US was still importing a lot of birds, and that stopped with the Wild Bird Conservation Act [in 1992] and other legislation. So now, of course, we still see many, many birds, but we're probably seeing more smaller species, like cockatiels, parakeets, conures, and we still see a lot of African greys because they're relatively easy to breed in captivity, and some other species, but some species we probably see less often.

We've always seen many different types of small mammals. But certainly, I would say, in the last 20 years, 15 years, and certainly probably in the last 10, rabbits are rapidly becoming very, very, very popular and very common…They're even almost as popular as cats now. So they're, they're really coming up there. And then ferrets, we've seen on and off, but I think they're probably not [as common]. They're still popular, but not as popular, probably, as they were in the early 90s, at least in my area [of New York]. Other parts of the country, they probably will be.

And then reptiles have changed. We used to see a lot of iguanas. Now, rarely do we see iguanas. We see more, now, bearded dragons. [They] are probably the most popular reptile pet. So it's all sort of changed, and [trends] also depend on what part of the country you're into, as far as the popularity of certain species.

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