Evie Button, the RSPCA’s senior scientific officer, said: “We have concerns about the breeding, trade and keeping of wild, or exotic, animals kept as pets, including those classified as dangerous wild animals, such as servals. <\/p>\n
“Animals should only be kept in captivity if good welfare can be assured and this can often be very challenging.<\/p>\n
“Exotic pets are wild, non-domesticated animals kept in captivity and so their needs are essentially no different to the same species living in the wild. <\/p>\n
“Some species – like servals – are unsuitable to be kept as pets because their needs are too complex to be met in a household environment.”<\/p>\n
Button encouraged prospective owners to do thorough research before keeping an exotic animal as a pet. <\/p>\n
Kevin Murphy, who runs Norfolk Wildlife Rescue, has alerted people on Facebook and is keen to find its owner.<\/p>\n
“To have one roaming about is a bit of a worry, but these things happen,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The owner should check the enclosure and make sure it is secure.<\/p>\n
“They are smaller cats than tigers and lions, but they are still big animals to have.<\/p>\n
“They are more temperamental than average cats.”<\/p>\n
He added servals were “prolific hunters” capable of catching lots of prey. <\/p>\n
Do you have a story suggestion for Norfolk? Contact us below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Evie Button, the RSPCA’s senior scientific officer, said: “We have concerns about the breeding, trade and keeping of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":657094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-657093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/657094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}