
The ultra-rich are illegally buying cheetahs as pets, leading to extinction - spking
https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/08/28/africa/somaliland-cheetahs-gulf-intl/index.html
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mc32
Unfortunately this is nothing new. This was a thing in mogul India centuries
ago, it was a thing in Europe, it was a thing in Ottoman Asia Minor and it was
a thing in Roman times. The rich have always wanted to have menageries to show
off their wealth.

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ryanmercer
>Unfortunately this is nothing new.

An example of it being done in ancient Rome even.

>In what might be the world’s oldest recorded awkward situation, the Roman
orator Marcus Tullius Cicero spent much of his term as Cilicia’s governor
trying to ignore a very specific request from his former legal client Marcus
Caelius Rufus. In several letters sent over the better part of a year, Caelius
repeatedly begged Cicero to capture and send him a group of local leopards. He
needed the animals, he explained, because he was trying to launch his
political career—and nothing won over voters’ hearts better than live exotic
animal hunts in the arena.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/03/exotic-a...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/03/exotic-
animals-ancient-rome/475704/)

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xeromal
Did you even read his full post because he mentions Rome?

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ryanmercer
I quoted and linked an example...

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sunstone
Well if, as they say, this is leading to the extinction of the ultra-rich
then, the environment will almost certainly benefit.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
This actually might save the cheetahs. If there is a market for living
cheetahs, people might try to actually breed them in captivity. We have no
shortage or house cats or dogs because those animals are pets.

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tomatotomato37
You'd have to change public perception to where owning one is more equivalent
to a horse, which is a major investment in both land and money, than to a
large dog or whatever

