A series of social media posts showing a young man engaging in various activities with a mongoose he had adopted as a pet have triggered warnings from one of the country’s most senior vets and a terrestrial biologist about the health and safety risks involved.

Dr Paul Cadogan, who runs a veterinary clinic in May Pen, Clarendon, and well-known wildlife expert Damion Whyte warned a series of posts were encouraging people to domesticate predatory omnivores.

“As far as diseases go, the one that is of concern when it comes to mongoose is rabies,” Dr Cadogan said.

Although he acknowledged that Jamaica was rabies-free, he said no one could be sure whether the mongoose carried the viral disease.

Having been a veterinarian for more than 30 years, Dr. “If they have this disease, we can only find out if they encounter a human and test the animal,” Cadogan added.

“We are surrounded by countries where rabies is endemic, and although we have not seen any cases of rabies related to the animal trade in Jamaica, you never know what can happen; “Animal trafficking is always a threat to our disease-free status,” he said.

“We talk about research being done into the condition of these animals, but it hasn’t happened yet,” Dr Cadogan added.

“They also have the possibility of spreading leptospirosis because they can carry it and spread it. “As you know, this is a serious disease that can be fatal for people who contract it,” he added.

The young man, who named the mongoose Pixel, shows in the video series that the animal is washed and cleaned by him, feeds with him in bed, and generally crawls on him or runs around a house while he is sitting. and talking to a small land mammal that makes sounds similar to screams.

The posts became somewhat popular, with some viewers expressing a desire to get one of the mammals or asking how they could do so.

But Whyte, a final-year PhD student studying zoology at the University of the West Indies, and Dr. Cadogan urges caution.

“Mongoose are an invasive species, so even if they were introduced here on purpose, you don’t want to encourage them. They have carved out their own niche at the expense of some of the other wildlife,” Dr. Cadogan said.

He said he has encountered Jamaicans who keep mongooses as pets in the past.

“My concern, and my advice to them accordingly, is that although mongooses appear healthy, these are wild animals. As babies they can be lovely, cuddly and playful, but as they grow older and their instincts kick in there can be a risk of injury and this may be a concern even if it is not for the person keeping the mongoose. “The mongoose has a bond, it could be other people or other animals,” he said.

“They can be very aggressive when defending their territory, their cubs, etc. That’s the point; having to take responsibility for everything that happens. And of course mongooses are predators, they kill birds. Of course they will kill rodents, but they will also kill chickens. “So if you’re encouraged to have them around, there are those concerns,” he said.

Whyte agreed, noting that the decline in the Jamaican iguana population was due to the introduction of the Indian mongoose to the island in the mid-1800s to control rats, snakes and other pests in sugar cane fields.

He said local scientists thought the Jamaican iguana was extinct for decades until a boar hunter found an injured iguana in the Hellshire hills in St Catherine in 1990.

“The hunter brought him to the Zoo of Hope and that gave birth to the Jumpstart Program,” Whyte said. Jamaica Observer.

The program includes monitoring the iguana population to guide conservation plans; Predation control, which requires removing some predatory species, such as stray dogs, from the iguanas’ natural habitat; and fortification, which includes creating and maintaining habitable, artificial nesting sites for iguanas listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

“Mongooses like to dig up and eat iguana eggs, or they eat the hatchlings when the iguanas are born,” Whyte explained. “So now, once the eggs hatch, we take the hatchlings to the zoo where they are kept for up to three years and then returned to the wild.”

Whyte, whose social media posts on environmental issues under the name Rooster’s World have a large audience, said that he was running a Trap Program together with the Headstart Program to catch mongooses hunting in the country’s iguana burrows.

“We have teams every week in the Hellshire hills where the iguanas nest. “We have caught hundreds of mongooses over the years,” he said.

When asked what was done to the captured animals, Whyte said the animals were put down.

“But they breed fast and are very smart. “One of the things that keeps them alive is that they are omnivores, eating fruit and other animals, so they can survive in harsh conditions,” he said.

“We see a lot of this in Kingston now. They are good at living around people. They are aggressive and fight cats. “Also, because they are wild animals, they can turn around and bite people,” he said.

Dr. Like Cadogan, Whyte emphasized the danger the mongoose poses to other species and noted the malevolence of Jamaica and the Jamaican bird; These two birds were long thought to be extinct because invasive species, including ground-nesting and mongooses, preyed on their nests.

Scientists say the bird was last collected in 1879, while poverty in Jamaica has not been recorded since 1860. They also said a search for the bird between 1996 and 2000 was unsuccessful.

“So far I know three people who have kept mongoose as pets. I know because they are asking what to feed it and now other people are asking how to get it,” Whyte said.
Market ObserverHe added that some comments under social media posts about the mongoose Pixel showed interest in getting the animals as pets.

Both Whyte and Dr. Cadogan pointed out that there is no law in Jamaica preventing people from keeping mongooses as pets.

“So if they are going to do this they need to know about the concerns and act accordingly,” Dr Cadogan emphasized.

“I advise you to be careful, be careful, be careful. Dr. pointed out that the mongoose has a very pungent odor. “This could get bad for other people, if not for the people who keep them as pets,” Cadogan said.

Reacting to Pixel posts on social media, Dr. Cadogan said: “It’s going to be hard to curb this trend… To do what this guy did you have to take them off babies because catching an adult wild mongoose can be extremely dangerous if you try… (but) people need to know to be careful.”

Whyte supported this point, saying: “I can understand why people would want to have them, because they look cute and cuddly when they are small, but the important thing for people to remember is that these are wild animals.”

The key to countering this trend, he suggested, is educating the public about the risks of trying to domesticate mongooses.