Endangered Exotic Pets on Social Media in the Middle East: Presence and Impact.

ABSTRACT: The popularization of exotic pets on celebrity social media in the Middle East has led to questionable impacts on exotic pet demand and threats to species conservation. The objective of this study was to identify exotic animal species featured on Middle Eastern celebrity social media account posts, the public perception of those posts, and their potential impacts on exotic pet demand and conservation (for global-scale extrapolation). Public social media accounts of highly influential persons from oil-rich Middle Eastern regions were manually investigated to evaluate subject demographics, species features, and post information (likes, comments) between January 2017 and August 2018. Twenty-five subjects possessed active social media accounts, from which 418 social media posts were extracted

SUBMITTER: Spee LB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6720740 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature