Greg's Corner

Why you should never buy a monkey or parrot online

By Greg Collier

Whenever we talk about pet scams, we’re usually talking about the puppy scams that happen online. The puppy scam usually happens in one of two ways. Either you’re being charged for fees and expenses for a puppy that doesn’t exist, or you’re being sold a terminally ill animal from a backyard breeder. For these reasons and more, Geebo.com stopped accepting ‘pets for sale’ ads years ago. However, it’s not just puppies that can be part of these scams.

Recently, the Better Business Bureau of Michigan warned consumers about a website that claimed to be selling small monkeys and parrots for $1,000 to $1,500. The website claimed that they had a physical address in Michigan which actually turned out to be a home belonging to someone who had no idea their address was being used in this way. The scammers were collecting money by Western Union, MoneyGram, and Bitcoin. Just like the puppy scam, the scammers kept asking victims for additional payments for things like insurance and shipping costs. The primates and parrots didn’t actually exist and victims have complained about losing thousands of dollars in the scam.

There’s another more important reason why you shouldn’t be buying these animals online and that reason is cruelty. If someone is legitimately selling a monkey or parrot online, there’s a good chance that they’re part of the illegal exotic animal trade. Parrots are often smuggled into the country in cruel ways where more parrots are dying than ones that survive the trip. Baby monkeys that are put up for sale are often taken from their mothers and kept in squalid conditions before any sale.

Pets like dogs and cats have been bred over the millennia to be domestic companions for humans. Parrots and monkeys are both wild animals that really shouldn’t be kept in a captivity as a pet. That’s not even taking into consideration that both animals require constant care and attention. If you’re thinking about purchasing one of these animals either online or in a store, please do some research on the drawbacks of owning such an animal.