Cuddling capybaras and ogling otters: the problem with animal cafes in Asia

The second floor of an unassuming 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 at the disposal of dozens of paying customers – all clamouring for a selfie. As people eagerly thrust leafy snacks toward the 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 cropping up across the continent in recent years, driven by the animal’s growing internet fame. The semi-aquatic animals feature in more than 600,000 TikTok posts. In Bangkok, cafe customers pay 400 baht (£9.40) for a 30-minute petting session with them, along with a few meerkats and Chinese bamboo rats. Doors are open 12 hours a day, seven days a week. We used to talk about the food trade in China, but now the pet trade is increasing with all these pet cafes Sue Lieberman, WCS “They’re just so weird,” says Elizabeth Congdon, a capybara biologist at Bethune-Cookman University in Florida, mulling over the rodent’s sudden appeal. “And then you combine that weirdness factor with how docile they are, how easy they are to keep in zoos, and how social they are.” But the newfound popularity, experts say, is tied to a troubling boom in exotic animal cafes across Asia. Taiwan was the first place to allow cafe patrons to rendezvous with cats, in 1998. Japan and South Korea later popularised mingling with wilder animals, from owls to raccoons to otters. Last year, the latter cracked down on exotic animal cafes, introducing laws that would stop cafes displaying wild animals unless they were registered as zoos or aquariums. But in some of Asia’s other large cities, from Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam to Guangzhou in China, animal cafes are more popular than ever. “The amount of diversity and the number of animals – and, in particular, quite a few threatened animals – is very concerning,” 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 cursory online search yields capybara cafes in places such as Jakarta, Qingdao, and Hanoi. The rodents are not classified as endangered – they range from northern Colombia down to northern Argentina, with an estimated 1.2 million roaming Brazil’s wetlands and cities. But, “the reason they are not endangered is because they are abundant in Brazil where they are protected”, says Congdon, who says that in Venezuela and Colombia they live mostly in protected areas. The international trade in capybaras is not regulated by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites), though exporting native wild capybaras remains illegal in many South American countries, such as Brazil, Argentina and Peru. Experts say the rodents’ movement 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 supply chains for live animals converge at multiple points, and are often controlled by the same people and companies,” says Scott Roberton, executive director of a team countering wildlife trafficking at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). The capybaras at the Bangkok cafe are “from ethic [sic] farms in Thailand. We don’t import them from their original country,” according to a small sign in the animals’ enclosure. However, Roberton says: “Laundering of illegally caught animals into legal supply chains is very common, with those animals often then used to establish or supplement breeding stock.” Species at risk of extinction have also been swept up in the pet trade for exotic animal 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 the commercial trade of the vulnerable species. Concerns about the growth in the illegal pet trade – including for animal cafes – prompted members of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to adopt a motion targeted at curbing the illegal pet trade at its October congress meeting. “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 past five years, we have seen much 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 databases on corporations, Qichacha, reveals that the number of businesses listed as petting zoos, which includes animal cafes, shot up from fewer than 100 in 2020 to more than 1,800 in 2025. And while private pet ownership in China increased by 50% over the past five years, pet cafes have been growing at 200% annually. Related: Otters posing for selfies in Japanese cafes may be linked to illegal trade, experts warn A comprehensive analysis of recent growth in the number of exotic animal cafes across the whole of Asia is lacking, but one study co-authored by Bonebrake in the journal Conservation Letters found there were 406 animal cafes across Asia in 2019, just over a quarter of which contained exotic species. And of the more than 250 exotic species recorded, nearly half were threatened with extinction or had a decreasing population in the wild. Even in the absence of conservation concerns about imported species, some countries are worried about the movement of exotic animals for cafes. In May, police seized five capybaras from traffickers in Costa Rica, where trading capybaras is illegal due to fears they could escape and flourish in the wild. Capybaras breed rapidly, can withstand a wide range of temperatures, and have a flexible diet of grasses and aquatic plants. “There is a high risk for them to be invasive,” Congdon says. The impact of pet cafes on the illegal wildlife trade isn’t just limited to the animals moving through a venue’s doors, says Roberton, but how they may stimulate demand. “Suddenly, you’re encouraging people that there is this cool, big exotic animal that you can pet and feed. How many people leave that cafe and go, ‘I want a baby capybara’?” Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow the biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield in the Guardian app for more nature coverage