Hello,
I’ll be in Taiwan soon and I’m a huge reptile fan. I’ll be adopting a snake when I arrive and I was wondering if there are any groups of people who also keep exotic animals.
Thanks!
I have a bearded dragon and other pets that aren’t reptiles.
@Pinoco told me there are groups on facebook 
If you can read chinese I definitely say facebook. Search Taiwan and your animal and you can find very active groups that post a lot. They do trades and give out tips, its a great community. I’m a turtle man myself.
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Just don’t adopt snakes that look like this:
Unless you’re trying to develop antivenom or something. Milking them should be done by trained professional only.
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Thanks, my Chinese is not that good, I’ll ask my wife about it. I have seen some groups on facebook but so far they are quite inactive, the only that has posted something recently is in 高雄, I guess they’d ship it, but I’d like to see them first.
I’ll be in 新北, so any pet stores that you can recommend in 新北,台北 or 桃園 that you know they sell reptiles would be a great help!
Did you take the pic in Tw?
I used to keep quite a lot before moving here. There are lots of cool wild ones here.
The pet industry in taiwan is pretty grim. But there are some shops in taipei with lots of stuff.
A decent number of expats here are into field herping 
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For sure I’d like to join that!
Here’s one group (Herping the Globe) that has members from Taiwan:
And Forumosan @onionsack is into herping, but I’m not sure if he still visits here.
Thanks, I’ll check it!
No I took it while I was on the plane flying to Hawaii with one guy who is in witness protection.
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Probably the main online presence for such things.
http://www.fieldherpforum.com/forum/
If you are 100% on keeping as a pet. Some thoughts. If you arent 200% sure your future plans, where will your animal go afterwards? Taiwan is quite well known for lacking sympathy/empathy towards animals. And the few that do often vastly lack basic common sense in their care (eg. Every pet store, Buddhists releasing market animals, food industry, people dressing cagesd animals in himan like clothing and so on). It is actually VERY grim here. I was breeding upwards of 10,000 animlas before i moved to taiwan. It was already, in retrospect, grim in canada. Its 1000x worse here.
When i got here i completely switched industries from essentially animal husbandry to more botanical pursuits。for that precise reason.
As an aside, and i am not promoting poaching or wild caught animals. If you must keep something, perhaps alocal species that could be relased after. Note not to keep pet store or exotic species to reduce pathogen risks to wild populations. Or perhaps awild caught exotic species. Taiwan has increasing numbers of exotic species (for obvious and long predicted reasons). Vieled chameleons, tokay geckos, green iguanas, cane toads ,microhylla , some turtles etc.
If it were me i would go find, not buy (dont do as the budhists do and support a bad industry) a naturalized exotic species and keep that as a pet. At the bare minimum you are at least temporarily removing them from te wild breeding pool
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Ugh, this 10000000000000000%.
Not specifically Taiwanese but I have people all the time tell me I should release my rabbits into the wild or eat them. That’s like me telling someone they should kick their kid out or eat them wtf?
I understand your point and I agree.
I’m moving to Taiwan because my wife is Taiwanese and we want to settle down there, so my plans include staying in the island for a long time.
The reason for me wanting a reptile (snake, mainly) specifically when I arrive to Taiwan is related to the concerns that you have explained. I’m from Spain and I’ve been living abroad in different countries for the last few years. I didn’t want to get any reptile before because I didn’t know where was I going to be the following years. I’ve been for 10+ years learning about how to keep reptiles, and I’m as prepared as a newbie can be.
I only got a cat once I knew for sure that I was going to be able to bring it with me to Taiwan, and the whole process of how to do it. There is no regulation for the import of pet reptiles, at least not from China to Taiwan.
I’ve lived the last five years in China, and believe me I know how people can be towards animals. I don’t know Taiwan, but in China there are no laws (or at least none enforced) regarding animal rights.
I’ve literally seen, with my own eyes, people killing a protected species crocodile in a restaurant with a hummer, a policeman approaching them and instead of stopping it, offering help to kill it. It was in a rural area, but there is no excuse.
I could start a new topic only with my personal experiences. If I had to add what people told me, I’d directly create my own website about it.
I keep using the word “adopt” instead of “buy” in my posts and conversations about this topic, and it’s not a euphemism. I’m going to be looking for a rescue first.
Regarding the wild caught exotic species recommendation, it might not be as beneficial as you might think from the beginning. I’m a language teacher but I’ve also studied and obtained several certifications in ecosystem dynamics and I can tell you that it is not as simple as “removing invasive species”, but I see your point.
Thanks for the input!
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Awesome. With all that said, it will be quite hard finding arescue snake in taiwan. Best bet is hit up facebook groups for that. But highly unlikely as they are worth money. Likely, the only reliable option is buying one. Which makes it hard to avoid supporting the pet industry. Might get lucky and buy breeder direct, but that doesn’t really avoid the industry issus.
Anyways. What kind of snake are you looking for? Taiwan is one of those places that has all the normal stuff, very little of the more niche stuff and all the ultra expensive illegal stuff haha. All the regular ratsnakes, boids etc are fairly easy to buy here. Suggest not letting the shop probe them for you.
Yes, I realize that. I was hoping that by joining some groups not only I could get to know people with the same hobby, but also to know if there was any “rehousing” or rescue as well. I don’t mind paying for it, but if one is found or someone prefers not to keep keeping it, I could get that one.
The last few times I came to Tw I checked several pet shops to know a bit what they had, and as you’ve said, the normal stuff is here too. Several kinds of kingsnakes, balls, corns, hognoses, etc. I also saw some rosy and sand boas, bci and garter snakes.
As I accepted long time ago that my favorite one (black-headed python) wasn’t going to be available for several reasons, I was looking for a hognose and/or bci, but besides the sand boa (aka the sand box pet 
), I’d be happy with pretty much any kind. It might be a blessing, if I was going to go to the US, I’d have so many options that I would never decide 
.
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Awesome. Sand, rosy, emeralds, green trees etc are all here. Black heads and womas as well, but no one would give away such an expensive snake for free. Rescues are great, i applaud people that do them a i have grown to dislike the pet trade generally speaking. But taiwan you wont likely find any reptiles for rescue other than maybe turtles and iguanas. Be very lucky to find snakes.
I found it interesting to see garter snakes here too haha.
I remember the woman at the pet shop being quite excited telling me you can feed them live fish instead of rodents. I guess she encountered several times people with issues feeding live mice or rats. Which brings another question btw; is there any place where I can buy frozen feeder mice? I asked and the same woman told me that “they could get them”, but it sounded quite vague. 
The reptile shops should have them. Thats something you could have shipped easily via frozen black cat (courrier company) delivery. You are in Hsinchu right? Train trip to Taipei is short. Might be a fun thing to do one day you are free. There is a bug place i like to go every time i am in taipei. They have afew common reptiles, but have some neat inverts. Thy are aimed at kids and have a cool helth check system where they bring in their bug (usually beetle larvae) and te “doc” checks them out and fills out their card. Its not that heesy kind of kid place ,its normal but educates kids. I quite like it! Brown mrt on way to the zoo. If youre interested i will ask my wife for the name/address.
No, I’ll be in New Taipei, Tamsui.
That’d be great, thanks.