Exotic animal cafés in Japan: A new fashion with potential implications for biodiversity, global health, and animal welfare

Les cafés à animaux exotiques au Japon: une nouvelle mode avec des implications potentielle pour la biodiversité, la santé globale et le bien-être animal

Marie Sigaud (1, 2) , Tomomi Kitade (3) , Cécile Sarabian (1, 4)

1 Kyoto University
2 CESCO - Centre d'Ecologie et des Sciences de la COnservation
3 Traffic Japan
4 CUHK - City University of Hong Kong [Hong Kong]

Wildlife trade is a multibillion-dollar industry and concerns not only the exploitation of animals for their body parts but is also largely fueled by the demand for exotic pets. We document, in Japan, a recent phenomenon closely related to the pet trade and rapidly spreading in Asia: the display of exotic animals in a café/bar context. We surveyed 142 exotic animal cafés (EACs) by visiting their website and/or social media accounts. We recorded every available exotic animal species, their status based on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species and Appendix according to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). We compared the CITES Appendix-listed species imported in Japan during 1975-2019 to the species present in EACs. Most EACs opened in major cities between 2015 and 2017 under the label "owl café." We recorded 3793 individuals belonging to 419 different species in 137 EACs active in 2019.

Keywords: CITES; invasive species; IUCN Red List; owl; pet café; welfare; wildlife trade; zoonosis

Domains: Environmental Sciences; Biodiversity and Ecology; Environmental Sciences; Environmental and Society

Marie Sigaud, Tomomi Kitade, Cécile Sarabian. Exotic animal cafés in Japan: A new fashion with potential implications for biodiversity, global health, and animal welfare. Conservation Science and Practice, 2023, ⟨10.1111/csp2.12867⟩. ⟨mnhn-03957488⟩