Cuddling capybaras and ogling otters: the problem with animal cafes in Asia | Illegal wildlife trade

TThe second floor of a modest office building in central Bangkok is a strange place to encounter the world’s largest rodent. Yet here, inside a small enclosure with a shallow pool, three capybaras are available to dozens of paying customers, all clamoring for a selfie. While people eagerly hand leafy snacks to these nonchalant-looking animals, few seem to consider the underlying peculiarity: How, exactly, did this South American rodent end up more than 10,000 miles from home, in a bustling Asian metropolis?

Capybara cafes have been popping up across the continent in recent years, driven by the animal’s growing internet fame. Semi-aquatic animals feature in over 600,000 TikTok posts. In Bangkok, cafe customers pay 400 baht (£9.40) for a 30-minute petting session with them, accompanied by a few meerkats and Chinese bamboo rats. Doors are open 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

“They’re so weird,” says Elizabeth Congdon, a capybara biologist at Bethune-Cookman University in Florida, reflecting on the rodent’s sudden appeal. “And then you combine that weirdness factor with their docileness, their ease of keeping in zoos and their sociability.”

But experts say this new popularity is linked to the worrying rise of cafes offering exotic animals across Asia. Taiwan was the first place to allow cafe patrons to meet cats, in 1998. Japan and South Korea later popularized mixing with wilder animals, from owls to raccoons to otters. Last year they cracked down on cafes housing exotic animals, introducing laws banning cafes displaying wild animals unless they were registered as zoos or aquariums. But in some other major Asian cities, from Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam to Guangzhou in China, animal cafes are more popular than ever.

“The diversity and numbers of animals – and particularly many endangered animals – are of great concern,” says Timothy Bonebrake, a conservation biologist at the University of Hong Kong who has studied the growth of exotic animal cafes in Asia.

Even a quick online search yields capybara cafes in places like Jakarta, Qingdao and Hanoi. These rodents are not classified as endangered: they range from northern Colombia to northern Argentina, with an estimated 1.2 million roaming Brazil’s wetlands and cities. But “the reason they are not threatened is because they are abundant in Brazil, where they are protected,” says Congdon, who says that in Venezuela and Colombia they live mainly in protected areas.

International trade in capybaras is not regulated by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites), although the export of native wild capybaras remains illegal in many South American countries, such as Brazil, Argentina and Peru. Experts say the movement of rodents from South America to Asia is often linked to the illegal pet trade, with the same people moving species across international borders.

“Legal and illegal live animal supply chains converge at many points and are often controlled by the same people and companies,” says Scott Roberton, executive director of an anti-wildlife trafficking team at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

The capybaras of the Bangkok café are “from ethics” [sic] farms in Thailand. We do not import them from their country of origin,” says a small sign in the animal enclosure. However, Roberton says: “Laundering of illegally captured animals into legal supply chains is very common, with these animals often then used to establish or supplement breeding stock.”

Endangered species have also been taken into the pet trade for exotic pet cafes. This year, a study linked small-clawed otters found in Japanese animal cafes to two poaching hotspots in southern Thailand, violating a ban on trade in the vulnerable species.

Concerns about the growth of the illegal pet trade – including for pet cafes – prompted members of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to pass a motion to curb the illegal pet trade at its October congress.

“The global pet trade is really out of control, from a conservation perspective,” says Sue Lieberman, vice president of international policy at WCS. “In the last five years, we’ve seen a lot more pet trade in Asia. We used to talk about the food trade in China, but now the pet trade in China is increasing with all these pet cafes.”

A survey of one of China’s largest business databases, Qichacha, finds that the number of businesses listed as petting zoos, including pet cafes, increased from fewer than 100 in 2020 to more than 1,800 in 2025. And while private pet ownership in China has increased by 50% over the past five years, pet cafes have seen growth of 200 % per year.

A comprehensive analysis of the recent growth in the number of exotic pet cafes across Asia is lacking, but a study co-authored by Bonebrake in the journal Conservation Letters found that there were 406 pet cafes in Asia in 2019, of which just over a quarter contained exotic species. And of more than 250 exotic species recorded, nearly half were threatened with extinction or had a dwindling population in the wild.

Even in the absence of conservation concerns for imported species, some countries are concerned about the movement of exotic animals into cafes. In May, police seized five capybaras from traffickers in Costa Rica, where the trade in capybaras is illegal over fears they would escape and thrive in the wild. Capybaras reproduce quickly, can withstand a wide range of temperatures, and have a flexible diet of grasses and aquatic plants. “There is a high risk that they will be invasive,” Congdon says.

The impact of pet cafes on the illegal wildlife trade isn’t just about the animals that come through a venue’s doors, Roberton says, but also how they can drive demand. “Suddenly you’re encouraging people to say there’s this big exotic animal that you can pet and feed. How many people leave that cafe and say, ‘I want a baby capybara’?”

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