Comments on IslaFormosa: Orangutan Alert and Other Strange House Pets

My family's from the south, (rural Pingtung) and ...

2008-06-24T23:30:00.000+08:00

My family's from the south, (rural Pingtung) and people do all kinds of crazy stuff there. One of my uncles raised a crocodile in the yard, which grew pretty big, but died from neglect eventually.

If you want to find the boar, the sports store is ...

2008-06-20T17:44:00.000+08:00

If you want to find the boar, the sports store is here. Note how close it is to the Presidential Building!!!

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=116401062288954723912.00044f834f63157969f99&ll=25.04031,121.512941&spn=0.006464,0.009398&z=17

Hey there, Your post reminded me of a story my Mom...

2008-06-19T01:43:00.000+08:00

Hey there,

Your post reminded me of a story my Mom told me about a pet monkey her brother had 50 years ago in Taiwan.

http://www.8asians.com/2008/06/18/let-me-show-you-my-pet-monkey/

The orang boom actually started earlier than that....

2008-06-13T20:30:00.000+08:00

The orang boom actually started earlier than that. It resulted in a boom in abandoned orangs later on.

Another ape in this 1980s boom were gibbons, which are common in Asia. Or used to be. They were smuggled into Taiwan and similarly abused and neglected, often winding up in zoos. The hitch was that nobody knew what kind of gibbon they were, and in many cases, they had hybridized. I recently read a paper on a couple of academics who solved the problem by recording calls from wild gibbons and matching them to the ones in local zoos no one could identify.

...and people thought Americans were crazy with their pet rocks.

Michael

After asking some people what they thought...we th...

2008-06-13T15:00:00.000+08:00

After asking some people what they thought...
we think it may be a form of badger, which isn't safe (or legal for that matter) to keep one.

No idea what that is either...All these bizarre an...

2008-06-13T11:03:00.000+08:00

No idea what that is either...

All these bizarre animals and Taiwanese wonder how Taiwan could ever be hit by something like SARS.

I now remember another story that a previous director relayed to me. He said that a student said that they had a monkey at their house, a high-rise apartment. One day they went out and left the monkey on the balcony. When they came home the monkey had gone (fell off, climbed down... whatever...).

Very typical. Questionable pet. Neglect.

You know, I want to try and find that picture of the boar in downtown Taipei. It scared the shit out of me as I initially thought it was a large dog.

I had an apartment in Danshui, and near it another...

2008-06-13T07:02:00.000+08:00

I had an apartment in Danshui, and near it another family had this animal:

Animal Picture

I can't remember the name of it, but I'm sure one of you knows. Just looking at it, to me, it seems like it would be illegal. My girlfriend just told me, as an American, I should stay out of it. So, I did.

Someone did, however, see me taking pictures of it and didn't like it, which is why I only got this one poor quality picture.