Full list of UK counties where people keep dangerous exotic pets - check your area

Certain dangerous exotic animals are kept as pets in Britain. There are records of these pets, and a detailed map shows where their owners are. Cats, dogs, and even goldfish are common pets in the UK, but some households choose to have more exotic and downright risky animals in their homes. In the UK, there are Sri Lankan Green Vipers, Arctic Wolves, and even Long-Tailed Crab-Eating Macaques kept as pets.

Born Free, which is an international wildlife charity dedicated to protecting animals from exploitation, has put together a list of every exotic animal kept as a pet in the UK. The charity has revealed that a total of 187private addresses across 126local authorities hold licences to keep dangerous wild animals. This can include lions, tigers, crocodilians and venomous reptiles. The organisation created a map to reveal where these animals are kept, with areas in red representing places where at least one household has one of these animals.

The UK counties that have households with exotic and dangerous animals as pets are:

England:

• Bedfordshire
• Berkshire
• Bristol
• Buckinghamshire
• Cambridgeshire
• Cheshire
• Cornwall
• County Durham
• Derbyshire
• Devon
• Dorset
• East Sussex
• East Yorkshire
• Essex
• Gloucestershire
• Greater London
• Greater Manchester
• Hampshire
• Herefordshire
• Hertfordshire
• Kent
• Lancashire
• Leicesterhsire
• Lincolnshire
• Norfolk
• North Yorkshire
• Northamptonshire
• Nottinghamshire
• Oxfordshire
• Shropshire
• Somerset
• South Yorkshire
• Staffordshire
• Suffolk
• Surrey
• Tyne and Wear
• Warwickshire
• West Sussex
• West Yorkshire
• Wiltshire
• Worcestershire

Scotland:

• Aberdeenshire
• Angus
• Clackmannanshire
• Dumfries and Galloway
• East Ayrshire
• Falkirk
• Fife
• Moray
• Perth and Kinross

Wales:

• Bridgend
• Carmarthenshire
• Denbighshire
• Monmouthshire
• Powys
• Swansea

The detailed list revealed the unusual pets kept in each county. For example, two pet cheetahs are kept in Cheshire, while households in Cornwall have four pet ostriches and four lynxes.

In Durham, there are a staggering North American Plains Bison, and in Devon, there are three wild boars. A number of households in Essex have dangerous snakes as pets, such as the Western Diamondback Rattlesnake, Monocled Cobra, Ceylon Pit Viper, African Bush Viper, Mangrove Cat Snake, and Common Tiger Snake.

Other animals that you might not realise are kept as pets in the UK are monkeys, camels, zebras, leopards, alligators and hippos. Ownership of these animals is regulated by the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976.

A few counties in England are without dangerous or exotic animals as pets, according to the charity's most recent research. They are the Isle of Wight, Rutland, Cumbria, Merseyside, Northumberland, and West Midlands.