Monkey addicted to marshmallows saved from exotic pet trade
Charities have warned of a growing trade in wild animals across Scotland after a monkey was discovered in a bird cage in East Lothian with a marshmallow addiction.They are calling on the Scottish government to introduce a permitted list of animals that can be legally kept as pets.OneKind, the Scottish SPCA and Born Free say there are currently very few restrictions, which has led to many creatures suffering in unsuitable conditions.The young marmoset monkey - called Steve - was taken in by the Scottish SPCA after neighbours spotted him in a living room window in March.
The charity said the four-year-old monkey was underweight and "stressed out" from constant handling.He had developed an addiction to sugary marshmallows after being repeatedly fed them as a treat.After six weeks in the charity's care, Steve made a full recovery and was moved to a permanent home in a monkey sanctuary in England.
'Growing trend'
Gilly Mendes Ferreira, the Scottish SPCA's strategic communications director, said people were unaware of the scale of wild animal keeping in Scotland."It's a growing and worrying trend," she said. "Animals like Steve being bought and sold as novelty pets, often on impulse, with little understanding of the complex care they require."She added: "Marmosets are highly intelligent, social primates that need space, stimulation, and the companionship of their own kind."No domestic setting - no matter how well-meaning - can truly meet those needs. "The Scottish government said it was committed to the highest standards of animal welfare and understood public health and conservation concerns around the keeping of exotic pets.Research by the animal charities for their new Don't Pet Me campaign suggested requests from children may persuade people to acquire novelty pets.
External influences like social media, films and games such as Pokémon and Minecraft have also been linked to the trade of wild animals. Researchers from the charities found that over a 16-week period, creatures from more than 300 species were advertised for sale in Scotland.They said the trade was an international business with some animals transported by couriers in inappropriate containers - sometimes without any indication a live animal is inside.A Scottish government spokesperson said: "We welcome the work of groups in dealing with the welfare problems caused by irresponsible owners and the campaign for raising awareness of this important issue."The Scottish Animal Welfare Commission has explored the issues surrounding the keeping of exotic pets and we will continue to consider the steps that could be taken in this area."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Scotsman
20 hours ago
- Scotsman
A Midlothian student has been hailed as a 'game changer' for her voluntary work
A Midlothian student is being highlighted by the The National Lottery as part of a new campaign spotlighting the inspirational young people driving change across the UK. Sign up to our daily newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... New research shows that 82% of Scottish young people feel a personal responsibility to be positive role models – with many already making a real difference in their communities. Hayley Melrose from Danderhall, was chosen for the campaign in recognition of her commitment to preserving Scottish heritage. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad A fourth year history student at the Stirling University, Hayley has been a volunteer for the eco-museum of Scottish Mining Landscapes since the project launched in 2024. With support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the project set up a virtual museum which explores the hidden local landscape legacies of coal mining across the Scottish midland coalfield through a series of cycling and walking routes. Hayley has been recognised for her dedication to local heritage. Through her volunteering, Hayley was invited to sit on the board of the Collection Trust for the National Mining Museum of Scotland. With just five trustee members before Hayley joined, at just 21 she is the youngest member to have been on the trust, and the second woman to sit on the collection trust with her university tutor, Dr Catherine Mills. Hayley said: 'Inspired by my own family's rich mining heritage, I'm passionate about preserving the legacy it leaves and making sure these stories don't get lost. Getting involved in volunteering and the Eco-Museum has opened up opportunities I never knew young people could get involved with. Looking ahead, I want to use my platform to advocate for other young people and change the face of heritage in the UK.' This surge in real-world role modelling is fuelling a wider movement, dubbed 'Generation GC' (Game Changers) by The National Lottery – a generation using their skills, values and energy to build stronger, kinder, more connected communities. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Jonathan Tuchner, from The National Lottery Promotions Unit, said: 'This study shows how passionate young adults are about stepping up as positive role models and making a difference in their communities. They're determined to shape a better society, and that commitment deserves real recognition.'
Scotsman
a day ago
- Scotsman
Why Scottish Government has made right decision over Galloway National Park
Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... According to the US National Park Service, the 19th-century Scottish conservationist John Muir was 'more than just an observer of the wilderness; he was its fiercest advocate. His passion for the land drove him to protect the places he held dear, ensuring that future generations could experience their beauty'. After moving to America as a child, Muir's writings about the natural world inspired the creation of the world's first national parks in the 1870s. However, it was not until 2002 that Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park became the first in the country of his birth, quickly followed by another in the Cairngorms. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Proposals to create a third in Galloway initially seemed to be going well but ran into considerable local opposition and the Scottish Government has now concluded that the strength of feeling against the idea means it cannot proceed. A map showing the proposed boundary of the Galloway National Park, which will not now go ahead | contributed A place where people live and work Rural Affairs Secretary Mairi Gougeon told MSPs that 57 per cent of responses to the consultation process from local people and organisations were opposed. She added that she realised the decision would 'be very disappointing for those who have been campaigning for a new national park in Galloway over many years'. That disappointment, by those who see themselves as the ideological descendants of Muir, is understandable as clearly the area is wilder than many parts of Scotland, and a national park would have had some benefits. But Galloway is also a place where people live and work. Forcing new controls designed to protect nature upon a reluctant population would have been foolish. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad In recent years, public suspicions that 'consultation' processes simply rubber-stamp what the government was planning to do anyway have grown. This decision shows that is no longer the case, if indeed it ever was. It does not mean that national parks have no place in Scotland, but it does mean they must be responsive to local people's opinions.
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Daily Mail
Guilty, conman who duped top hotels by selling fake Scots tea in £550,000 scam
A conman who bought tea from round the world and sold on it as Scottish is behind bars after being found guilty of a fraud totaling more than half a million pounds. Thomas Robinson, 55, also known as Thomas O'Brien or 'Tam O'Braan', rented land on a former sheep farm near Loch Tay and began supplying Edinburgh 's top Balmoral Hotel with what he described as authentically Scottish single-estate tea. He claimed he'd been told that tea he had supplied to London 's five-star Dorchester Hotel was 'the Queen's favourite'. A court heard he bought tea plants from a nursery in Sussex and installed them for show in a former kitchen garden at Dalreoch Farm, Amulree, Perthshire, shortly before an expected visit from buyer acting for foodstore Fortnum and Mason's. He said he had found a way to make his tea grow in half the usual time - using a 'special biodegradable polymer' which the prosecution said looked like black bin liner - and claimed to have given a presentation on his methods to the Royal Horticultural Society. The tea menu at the Balmoral's Palm Court, based on descriptions Robinson gave them, boasted 'Our Scottish grown teas come from gardens in our farming heartlands in Perthshire and Dumfries and Galloway'. They had names like 'Dalreoch White', 'Silver Needles', 'Scottish Antlers Tea', and 'Highland Green'. Falkirk Sheriff Court heard he spun elaborate tales to customers while trading as 'The Wee Tea Plantation' in what the prosecution described as the 'CV of a fantasist'. He secured deals to supply his tea products from his own plants and other tea gardens in Scotland to France's oldest tea house Mariage Frères, as well as the Balmoral, The Dorchester, Fortnum and Mason and a Dunfermline-based firm called The Wee Tea Company. But the court heard Robinson bought over a tonne of tea grown abroad, repacked it, and sold it on. He had the foreign leaf delivered to a mailbox address in Glasgow and paid for it from a joint personal bank account, not his business account. One expert said a kilo of top tea from Africa could be sold for 100 times its cost if passed as grown in Scotland. Robinson also claimed to have produced tea plants at Amulree from cuttings and seed. Between 2015 and 2018 he supplied 22,000 plants to a dozen other growers in Scotland and one in Jersey at £12.50 each. The jury heard that over the same period he was actually importing tea plants at three Euros each from Italy. He either passed them off as Scottish-grown or allowed his customers to assume they were. Many died or did not thrive, and yields were a fraction of what Robinson had led his customers to expect. One grower bought thousands of plants to plant near Castle Douglas but gave up seven years later after a meagre harvest of just 100g of finished tea. Robinson claimed that with the exception of 15,000 plants sold to a grower in Jersey, all the Italian plants had been in Scottish ground for a period and that made them Scottish. The scam began to unravel early in 2017 after Perth and Kinross Council started to check up on whether Robinson had a food processing licence; then he received a visit from a Scottish Government advisor about plant passports. As the authorities started to close-in, he spun a story claiming thousands of his plants had been stolen. The Food Crime and Incidents Unit of Food Standards Scotland was called in, and an investigation was launched, headed by a retired police inspector. Prosecutor Joanne Ritchie said Robinson had formed 'a scheme to deceive and make money on the basis of lies'. She said: 'When you look at what he was actually doing, the suggestion that this was genuine Scottish tea or these were Scottish-grown plants is almost laughable. 'He lied to every single witness who encountered him, but more than that he lied to the population at large, to the people who had been buying this tea on the understanding it was Scottish.' After a three and a half week trial, involving thousands of pages of documentation, jurors took six hours to find Robinson guilty of defrauding the tea growers of £274,354 and the hotels and tea companies of £278,634 - a total of nearly £553,000 - between January 1, 2014 and end of February 2019. The verdict was unanimous, and with no deletions to any of the charges. Robinson denied the crimes, claiming that paperwork he could have used in his defence had been destroyed in a flood and his electronic records had been lost because his storage had been turned off. He insisted he had done no wrong and was 'proud' of his work telling the jury: 'I wanted to leave something that would stand in the history of tea.' He shook his head when the verdicts were announced. Sheriff Keith O'Mahony deferred sentence for reports until June 25th and remanded Robinson in custody. He warned him: 'There will be significant sentencing consequences for you.' Advocate Colin Neilson, defending, reserved mitigation. Robinson will also face proceedings under the Proceeds of Crime Act.
