Exotic Pets You Can Actually Live With
The next big things in exotic pets carry such names as Corn snakes, African hedgehogs, and Northern blue-tongue skink

By Steve Dale | 15 July 2009

HERE are five relative newcomers to the pet world. Perhaps their exotic appeal is bringing a little of the wild world into our concrete jungles:

AFRICAN HEDGEHOG
African hedgehogs are mostly active overnight, pitter-pattering around their enclosures and going in circles on their special hedgehog wheels. They're not the best choice for light sleepers.

Dawn Wrobel, of Beecher, Illinois, a former breeder, says the substrn bate in the cage cae shredded newspaper, manufactured newspaper cat litter, or polar fleece (from a fabric store), the most economical over the long haul because it can be washed and re-used.

Wrobel says their diet should be food produced especially for hedgehogs, supplemented with live and/or freeze-dried insects and cut-up chicken or turkey. Hedgehogs can live 10 years.

Those quills are modified hairs. Hedgehogs don't throw their quills, as some believe, but these pets are still too prickly to cuddle. Hedgehogs sell for US$90 to US$200, though those with fancy colors cost more.

 
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