What's the most exotic pet you've seen someone have?

My nephew has snails. He smuggled them out of the schoolyard in his hoodie after the teachers caught him the first time and confiscated them. My sister found them and had to take them to a pet store to make sure they weren't dangerous. Now they sit in a nice terrarium and it turns out the hardest part is keeping the humidity up.
- I’ve kept snails as pets. They are amazing.
- All that over snails? Like were they the kind that might've lost their way from the Amazon rainforest?
  
  When you live in Brazil, well…yes.
- Just be glad it wasn't the immortal snail
  
  decoy snails

Met a couple with a pet raccoon, on a leash and everything. I asked them how it was, since my wife had fantasized about a pet raccoon. They described it as a "little mischief goblin".
- We had one get into our trash once. I guess we had thrown out some yogurt that was starting to go bad and this little fucker got yogurty little foot prints all over our front porch. It almost looked intentional how many there were and how spread out it got them. Thankfully we just let our dogs out and they pretty much licked the porch clean lol.
- Yuuup. Cute little destructive whirlwinds that can open things. I've known a few, “little mischief goblin” is apt.
- Omg my dream. We used to have some visit us at my old work and we would feed them grapes and give them a lil bowl to wash their grapes in. They were the cutest.

I worked with someone who lived in South Africa who nursed a couple wild finches back to health. The finches got better but never flew away, and lived in the house. They’d sit on her shoulders during zoom meetings.

I’ve seen someone walking a pig in the forest. Yes, a large pink hairless pig. It was almost like walking a dog, but this animal was quite a bit larger than most dogs.
- Maybe a truffle hunter?
  
  That would make sense.
  Once I saw a documentary about truffle hunting, and dogs were much better in this regard. Pigs tend to eat everything they find, whereas dogs will obediently restrain themselves and only point to the truffle instead of eating it.
- One of my neighbors has a pig that's so beloved by the local community he has shirts. I have one. They have an African grey parrot too.
- Pigs can ear humans if they get hungry enough

I knew someone who dealt in exotic animals and they came to work with a baby caiman alligator in a Tupperware because they were selling it after work
- Was it well behaved?
- caiman
  alligator
  These are two different species. While caiman are part of the Alligatoridae family, they are not alligators apparently.
  Caimans are distinguished from alligators...
  Source:Wikipedia
  
  Let me go back in Time and double check
  
  Alligator is the common name for the family and also the common name of a few specific species. It's kind of like how all tortoises are turtles, but not all turtles are tortoises. All caiman are alligators, but not all alligators are caimans.

This isn't that exotic I guess but I had a customer at the restaurant that would smuggle in his pet rat (I worked the graveyard so usually nobody was around). Its name was Gizmo and it would sit on his shoulder under his sweater and he would feed it French toast. Sweetest little thing.
- Did it also use its owner as a marionette to cook linguini?

I live in California. Pretty much all the cool pets are illegal here.
That being said I knew a guy who had a raccoon and several ferrets. Their house smelled awful but once you were there for awhile you kinda stopped smelling it and the raccoon and ferrets were adorable together.
- I had a ferret in my 20s. Little dude bathed at least once a week and still smelled. Was (almost) litter trained and could bend in half, spastically hopping around like a little smelly crackhead
  
  Yeah they stink no matter what. You can get their stinky gland removed but I'm still not sure if that's good for them or not. Idk. I'm not a veterinarian and they are super illegal here so it's not really something I am concerned about at this present moment haha.

saw someone with a big ass snake.
Also, I owned a hedgehog once, dude had some serious trauma from his 5 previous owners. Yeah, 5.
He was always angry, but I still played with him anyways trying to get him to warm up to people. Never did, but he did like exploring all the books and crannies of the room. Wish I could've had him before all his previous owners :(
- ass snake
  Oh man, those are the worst!
- They need to regulate ownership better if he went through five bad owners, like was the person managing those transactions Dr. Eggman?

I'm friends with one guy who's got an axolotl and another who's got one of those African grey parrots. Both really cool animals. Also knew a kid back in school that had a pet squirrel.

I currently have a Tegu 4ft long and sorta harness trained so im that someone for the neighbors im sure 😅

When I was a kid, 7-8 years old kinda thing, there was an older guy (maybe 13) who had a pet hawk.
He'd walk around the neighbourhood with the hawk perched on his leather-bound wrist, chained somehow.
That's all I recall; don't know who, what, or how. Saw it 3 or 4 times over the course of a year or two....

Half dog, half wolf hybrid. That thing made a Great Dane look small. I mean, his head was slightly lower than mine at 5’8”. I could’ve easily ridden him. Beautiful animal. Wish I had a picture.

My aunt worked as a zoo vet, and was one of the people animal control would call if they found an exotic animal and didn’t know what to do with it. As a result I grew up being able to casually play with several different species of monkeys, as well as an asshole African grey parrot. When I was in high school she even fostered a serval cat for a short time till they could find a more permanent facility.
- I too want to to know about the asshole African grey parrot
  
  He was old, and didn’t have an easy life before being rescued. I don’t blame him, but it was kind of funny that his standard response was “fuck you”.
- Oh no, what did the parrot do?
  
  Cheated at cards.

My bestie has an iguana. Not that exotic in the grand scheme of things, even if pretty cool.
So I'm also internet acquainted with a guy that cares for tiger cubs. Except the big kitties aren't his, he just works at a zoo.

- Rule of thumb in my opinion, if you have to perform body modification on an animal, it doesn't sound like it was ever worth keeping. Clipping bird wings, deforming monkey thumbs, declawing cats, etc. make me cringe bad.
  
  Why the fuck would anyone declaw a cat??? Or the thing with a monkey?
  But I don't entirely agree with you - with some pets you need to cut their balls.
- Wtf … wy would you defang tarantulas ⁉️⁉️⁉️
  
  Yeah rip my fangs out id be an asshole as well
- I'm sorry, but the asshole here is your friend. First of all, "defanging" a spider will just kill the spider, slowly (see comment below).
  And while they certainly aren't for everybody, they actually are excellent pets if you know what you're doing. Hell, I've kept a dozen Pterinochilus murinus, which are indeed assholes, still never got bitten.
  People shouldn't keep pets if they don't know how to care for them.

A caiman. Vicious little git
- Oh caiman

The guys yard was 4 lots so fairly nice sized (1 acre?)... Underground tunnels that lead to "satellite" cages for the prairie dogs to keep an eye on the yard. Venomous snake shed(cobras and rattlesnakes) and to top it off a pair of breeding crocodile monitors. A true Florida man.

Have known as couple dudes who had coyote cross bread canines. Or at least that's what they said. Only really knew one of these dogs and its behavior never gave me any reason not to believe it wasn't half coyote.
The dog stayed outside all year round including the winter. Not the by choice of owner but was where the dog prefered to be. It hated the indoors and would get too hot inside with its winter coat and fat. Roamed hundreds of acres of farm land and forest. Killed more Coons and rabbits than any other animals with aren't the easiest animals to pin down. Was always a well behaved dog but if you fucked with it, snuck up on it, or played too rough... you prolly were getting stitches on your forearm or ass. It never attacked anyone unprovoked tho, it just sucked how easy it could be to accidently fuck up doing something like grabbing a glass of water in the middle of a summer night when someone forgot to let it out after dinner. It would like to chill inside in the AC on hot summer days.
Knew another dude when we were highschool aged who caught an orphaned white tail fawn. Raised it with his beef calfs and it lived like 3 years. Spent its whole life, including the 2 years it was a mature adult doe, just chillan and ranging around my buddy's property. Would grunt outside the barn when dinner was late. We think that it basically thought my buddy was another deer so it would grunt like it's trying to find other deer in the area if my buddy wasnt home or was late putting out feed. Anyone reading this should know tho, don't fucking adopt abandoned fawns. Or any fuckin wild animals for that matter. If you find one, contact your local DEC office and let them handle it.

There's a guy on Instagram who has two absolutely massive pythons, like 16 feet long and thick as tires. They drape themselves across his young daughter very casually, and she spends time playing Barbies with the big one. The owner is very educated about snakes and obviously takes very good care of them, and isn't some trash person who just wants violent animals, but much like pit bulls all it takes is one wrong turn and that child could die in a terrible way. I know some pet snakes are very docile, but something that could take it into its head to strangle me for dinner is not a pet to me.
People's pit bull apologia is bad enough, we had a person in my ER one night who had been walking their friend's pit bull who they walked often, who yanked the leash when he saw another dog, and when they tried to grip it the dog turned around and began mauling them, and ripped their arm right off. Someone called 911 and the cops showed up and had to shoot the dog and kill it to get it off them, and they took both them and the arm to our hospital but couldn't save it. My niece is also missing part of her lip because of a pit bull. Those are exotic animals that are extremely dangerous to me, fuck that nanny dog bullshit.
- More importantly, with a pitbull it's mostly about training and handling. But snakes - even the intelligent ones - are very different from dogs. They are way more controlled by instinct and are natural predators of monkeys and young great apes. They are not intelligent in the same way mammals are, their internal machinery can at any point in time simply click with the wrong situation and that toddler is gone.
  
  They do look benign and just curious with the child, I won't be unfair, and he's really well versed in their care. I don't want to make him sound bad or anything, he's really a nice guy and I've asked him some questions he has good answers for. But who wants to run that risk? Those kids in Nova Scotia who died because a pet python escaped its enclosure and climbed into the air vent, fell through the ceiling because it was 100 pounds,and reacted to the screaming kids it fell on top of? That's terrifying.

Used to have around 50 tarantuals (and some other spiders).
- Why fifty?
  
  No reason, that was just the number at wich it steadied out. I guess the room was full, no more space for more terrrariums.

When I was a kid back in the 70's there was a woman with a spider monkey who lived in the same trailer park as my grandfather. She rode around on a bike with it on her shoulder and would stop when my sister and I were visiting. We were never allowed to pet it, we'd watch while the lady fed it clovers.
- I'm not an animal expert, but I'm fairly certain clovers are not a good diet for spider monkeys.

My parents had a zebra when I was growing up in Northern California. He was skittish, to the point that this animal lover never got closer than 10 feet until it wound bolt. He brayed at sunrise, easily drowning out the roosters. He sadly ingested part of a mat in his stall which ended up killing him.
After my parents moved once I left home, they got 2 more of these fancy donkeys.
- Pro life tip to people like them: Use non-toxic, specialized decor when sheltering animals.
  The best shelters and zoos never have issues like the carpet incident because every big or small aspect and nook and cranny is catered. They don't buy generic room brands for example.

I saw someone bring their bobcat into a Lowes once. It was on a leash, and you bet I did not trust that leash. It looked overwhelmed.
- They were allowed to do that?
  
  Are you gonna stop them?

My kids' elementary biology teacher had a zoo in his classroom, all these snakes and lizards and spiders, all sorts of animals, so in the Christmas break he had to farm them out. We got the tarantula once, and once a boa.
Also twice raised abandoned baby squirrels we saw kids walking around with. Like my ex just said "dude, you know how to take care of that?" And the kid shook their head no. Yes, twice. One was Earl, one was Pearl. They were sweet, and very sharp.
One of my kids' swim coaches had a friend with a pet crow, too. A sailor with a pet crow; in fact a creepy sailor with a pet crow
I am sure you can guess what state I live in.

Oh another post, my friend's parents had a kinkajou that lived in the couch and pooped from high shelves at night.