[Microbiological conservation medicine and exotic pets]

The keeping and the breeding of exotic pets in privacy is a hobby with increasing popularity in industrialised countries. The growing demand for animals usually imported from the tropics, the growing demand for unprofessionally bred feeder organisms, and the increasing number of cases of faulty caring behaviour lead to the creation of new infectiological niches in the interface between exotic pet--nurse--feed--vivarium. These niches are filled preferably by ubiquitous, facultative pathogenic, stress- and age-deduced opportunists with a broad host spectrum. On the one hand these extraordinary germ faunas, relating to their compositions, may generate broad relevance in human medicine, lead to bizarre clinical pictures in specific cases, and may contribute to a reduction of the mean span of life of exotic pets kept in human care. On the other hand the quantitative composition of the fauna may also be a direct measure of the degree of stress the pets are suffering in captivity. Thus, a professional designation of the germ fauna of an exotic pet may contribute to an optimisation of the captivity conditions.