Animal fancy is a hobby involving the appreciation, promotion, or breeding of pet or domestic animals.
Fancy may include ownership, showing, trialling and other competitions, breeding and judging. Hobbyists may simply collect specimens of the animal in appropriate enclosures, such as aquaria, vivaria and aviaries. Fanciers with means may keep hobby farms or private zoos. There are many animal fancy clubs and associations in the world catering for everything from pigeons to Irish Wolfhounds; members may own many animals or none at all.
There are also many animal fancying hobbies that include keeping animals considered exotic pets, such an example of a rapidly growing hobby is herpetoculture- the keeping of reptiles and amphibians.
Read more about Animal Fancy: Organizations
Famous quotes containing the words animal and/or fancy:
“Many parents worry that they will reinforce a fear by being overly sympathetic. It helps to know that when children are permitted to avoid an animal or an object that frightens them, they tend to overcome a fear sooner than if parents push them to confront it.”
—Cathy Rindner Tempelsman (20th century)
“Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)