Animals in Captivity

Selling Suffering: Exploring Online Sales of Exotic Pets in the U.S. (2023)

Born Free USA’s report, Selling Suffering, reveals that there are countless wild animals for sale on classified ad sites, with availability in almost every state. This report follows our 2016 report, Downloading Cruelty: An Investigation into the Online Sales of Exotic Pets in the U.S., which first brought light to the problem of online animal sales.

There were hundreds of primates, big cats, and snakes advertised, and the vast majority of animals for sale were babies. Little care information was provided to potential buyers with very few posts providing the history of the animals. Overall, the research found a significant, largely uncontrolled trade in wild animals online. In the intervening years, Internet usage has only proliferated and this report seeks to update the work carried out in 2016.

For Selling Suffering, Born Free USA investigators examined 719 online classified advertisements over a three-month period across four classified ad sites. Overall, sales of exotic pets on these sites were down from the 2016 study, yet the trends identified within the ads remained the same as those discovered in 2016, with baby animals being favored for sale, little to no care instructions being provided, and little to no information about potential injury or disease transmission.

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