In some countries dangerous wild animals and some dog breeds are banned. In some other places they have probably never heard about those rules. Like in Africa where you can have a hyena or a baboon or maybe a python as a pet.
For them it’s pretty normal putting a chain on a hyena and taking it out for a walk, or maybe ride your motorcycle with a baboon sitting in the back.
That’s is so cool!
Wish i had pets like that!
Go to Africa then so, lol
;)) Are you sure? :-t
Unbelievable!!!
sure, find a couple pictures and claim they represent an entire continent
these men are 'Gadawan Kura' as they are known in Hausa (a rough translation: 'hyena handlers/guides'). They are a band of relatives that have these animals and travel around trying to make money by entertaining others with their unusual pets
NOT EVERYONE IN AFRICA DOES THIS
Thanks Scott. Glad to know not everyone looks at the world through shutters
I’m pretty sure you can have pythons as pets anywhere.
i’m sorry, but those guys with the pet hyenas look soo god damn hardcore i can’t even handle it lol
Nigs always want the baddest dog.
A lot of there are staged photographs by photographer Pieter Hugo. Do not be fooled.
Is this in the U.S ? Looks like those bad suburbs near New York.
That’s definitely Madison Square Garden.
You can keep pythons most places. Not all python species are giants–the most popular pet species, the ball python, maxes out at 6 feet, with most individuals never exceeding 4 feet. It’s a small snake, and completely harmless.
The snake in the photo is an unhealthy-looking juvenile African Rock Python. That is a species that gets pretty big. It’s a telling point that the other animals in the photos appear healthy. Few people can tell a sick reptile from a healthy one, which is part of the reason why they suffer from mistreatment so often. Education is key. Pythons don’t make bad pets, but owners need to know what they’re doing and follow safe handling practices.
these are members of a somalian circus who make their living with those animals.
that does not mean that this is usual in “africa” as if it was one single country.
it is not usual to parade white tigers through las vegas just because siegfried and roy did.
stupid idiots! hope those hyenas bite their faces off and they should be on chains…
It is not funny! We are also living without putting any chain on our neck.
Some of our people are all most dangerous than wild these animals.
!!COOL!! is better than stay in home all the day seeing the hypnotic t.v and playing stupid video games atleas this people enjoy of the nature and of this incredible animals.
“The title is not true; These pictures come from a series taken by Pieter Hugo while he followed a legendary group of itinerant street artists known as the Hyena Men. These men earn their money by performing on the streets with hyenas, pythons and baboons, and by selling traditional medicines.”
http://www.michaelstevenson.com/contemporary/exhibitions/hugo/nigeria.htm
Africans are uniquely brave. keep it up guys.
I can’t imagine the photographer wasn’t intentionally trying to portray this part of Africa (or Africa as a whole) as a bleak, cold, and dangerous place. Notice that there are few blues and greens from nature. The warmth of their skintones has also been reduced to the point where they look less like living, breathing humans and more like (dangerous) robots.
The combination of subject matter, aesthetic choices, and common misconceptions about Africa makes these pictures really problematic. Especially that 2nd to last one. If anyone who has never been to Africa saw that picture, it would only make sense for them to think that the continent is an unwelcoming place where all men (no women and children) walk around with wild animals in chains. Oddly enough, it’s also the one picture where you can see more natural skintones…
I really hope people who see these pics don’t take them at face value or as accurately documenting life on such a massive and beautiful continent!
The first photo was sick cool. It was like from a game or something. this is cool. I never knew hyenas are big animals since I saw this
I thought I had it bad with my house cat with attitude. I couldn’t imagine having a hyena even with a muzzle.
unmistakbly Nigerian,have come across these guys several times and they still amaze me.One of the very few things am proud of about this strangely unique land.
As a python breeder i can say pythons should not be included in this discussion even as someone who keeps reticulated pythons I have a better chance of being killed by a dog. more people own hyenas in the US than africa, there are more tigers in texas than india.
The US has more big cat owners per capita than any other nation
I have several hundred exotic snakes many big enough to kill me and I live in suburban colorado. The person who put this topic up here needs to think before judging another culture.
animal cruelty at its worst these animals are ment to be wild not pets
Oh for God’s sake people, in most African countries the most exotic thing you can own is a snake. Which isn’t exotic in Africa. At all.
This is the most insular article I have quite possibly ever read. Why is this generalized to the entire CONTINENT of Africa? No mention of separate countries, or regions, just the continent! How narrow- minded can you be? This article has no realistic basis to its claims at all. “For them it’s pretty normal putting a chain on a hyena and taking it out for a walk” Sorry but no, it is not “normal” to own a hyena, chimpanzee, giraffe, etc. as a pet. Many people from Africa have not even seen these so called wild animals until they visit Zoo’s in AMERICA! This is the biggest load of bull I’ve ever read. Try taking a trip to Cape Town, to Lagos, to parts of Cameroon, and you will find well established cities- no, not huts and wild animals roaming around- but actual cities! It absolutely baffles me how uneducated people are about one of the most bountiful continents on our planet. Do some fact checking before stupidly portraying an ENTIRE CONTINENT as only a slight sum of its anomalies
most of you are ignorant, so ignorant its amazing, OH MY GOD THE WILD AFRICANS GET TO KEEP HYENAS AS PETS…ID LIKE TO KEEP IGNORANT AMERICANS AS PETS, OR PET FOOD FOR OUR HYENAS AND PYTHONS…dumbasses
That dude in the first picture looks like my trash man.
Keyboard explorers, is it not enough that that Fox news have mashed your brains?
Man majority of you Americans are cool but some of you guys are worse than the worst third world idiots.
I saw the first guy on another site…completely bad azz to me…
How sad and cruel.
Reminds me of dancing bears in India.
There, the people are poor and can’t turn to other work easily, so wild animals get tortured and chained to ‘dance’ for the tourists.
Corrupt officials won’t stop this – the only thing that will is if tourists stop giving money. Judging by some of the replies here, I guess there will always be some who think this kind of thing is ‘cool’ rather than desperately sad.
Given a free choice, my guess is the hyena would prefer to chew the guy’s leg off for supper.
I am an African American who lives in Lexington, Kentucky. I have been to Africa. But whatever negatives I hear about Africa do also happen here in America. The difference is that our media is stronger than that of Africa. Secondly, we Americans are very ignorant about the world or anything that is not American. Because we are ignorant, and so brainwashed we think anything American is the best.
I have friends both black and white here in America who have exotic pets that if these were ‘owned’ by Africans or any other people, we would consider as “uniquely brave.” For example, a white friend of mine has a very big python snake in his house which he keeps as an exotic pet. I told him how in the world would he have such a thing in his house! I also have a white friend of mine, in fact a university of Kentucky graduate student. He has two baboons as his pets in his backyard. I am sure if he was an African, I would say, he must be uniquely brave to keep such animals as baboons as pets.
There is so much negativity about Africa and Africans, especially by the media which would like to make big bucks by telling stories which are out of this world, and they target Africa. Why? Africa has any natural resources, you name it, diamonds, gold, etc. If you have a computer, mobile phone, any electronics, you own, chips in there were made out of a mineral that comes out of nowhere else in the world, but Africa. Why the negativity about Africa? Well, simple. Those Americans who go to Africa make fortunes for being there, and, like you and me know, the West is very greedy, and they would not like everybody else to go there and see for themselves. So they make it sound nasty. They ‘doctor’ photos of Africa to look very unwelcoming, they take photos of the down and trodden Africans as representing Africa. Now those genuine Americans who go to Africa wonder where are all those places portraying Africa as terrible? All they see is greenery, traffic jams like in New York, skyscrapers, the Internet, people wearing business suits during business hours. nice families, nice universities, KFC, MacDonald’s, and so on.
Someone told me another reason that Africa is portrayed like that is because there are more intellectuals and well educated Africans in Africa that make Americans and other Western nations jealous. That could be true judging by the large number of African students taking PhDs in their fields compared to less Americans. So one wonders, taking out capitalism, and, by association, materialism, who is more educated. We Americans are so ignorant that we don’t even know much about our own country, the United States. Now that being the case, how can we know about Africa and the world?
i hate all this animal cruilty, i just wish the hyena, baboon or snake will turn round bite the people to death then run for their lives untill they are safe and living like they should… IN THE WILD AND FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i hate this man i hate this i live in alobama and we hate this man this is animal cruilty man i hate this this is wrong man i hate this!
those dudes are a$$h07z. so what if yu can kidnap a hynea pup and throw a big ol rusty chain on its neck with a little basket over its mouth. man..that is so wrong.
nclusion body disease (IBD) has been inrnsaeicgly diagnosed in boas and pythons ( boids ). It is believed to be a retrovirus. The way it affects these two groups of snakes is slightly different but the long term effects are the same: the disease is terminal in those animals who exhibit symptoms of the disease.Pythons, although their symptoms may be somewhat less, are just as affected as boas. There are asymptomatic carriers, so the fact that a boa or python within an infected collection does not show signs of the illness should not be taken to mean that it is immune to it. Boas are most associated with being asymptomatic carriers. What causes this disease? Intracytoplasmic eosinophilic inclusion bodies have been identified in the epithelial cells of the kidneys and pancreas. Neuronal degeneration and lesions form in the spinal cord and brain, and may be accompanied by myelin degeneration and nerve damage. Damage to the spleen is also found, with that organ being grossly atrophied and fibrosed. Electron microscopy has found that the organism falls into the retrovirus category.The snake mite, Ophionyssus natricis, has been found in collections in which IBD has occurred but it is not implicated in all cases of infection.As this has been identified as a viral entity, it may spread like a virus, through contact between infectious organisms (such as housing an infected snake with a previously healthy one) or through airborne aerosolized secretions, or by the keeper passing secretions from one snake or enclosure to another during the course of handling or cleaning (when strict quarantine and cleaning procedures are not followed).There is at this time no treatment for the disease and, as it is at this time always fatal and highly contagious, euthanasia is the course of action recommended. Even if the snake can be kept alive through supportive measures (hydration and force-feeding), the damage to the nerves, brain, spinal cord and internal organs is so great and progressive that live is only prolonged with an ever decreasing quality and increasing pain. Due to the increasing incidence of this disease, it cannot be stated or urged strongly enough to QUARANTINE ALL NEW BOIDS upon acquisition for at least 3-6 months, and to take precautions when visiting other collections, pet stores and expos/swaps. So it is just a snake thing. Don’t worry.