Our writers
Three people write the guides here, split by the animals they spend the most time with. Every guide carries the name of whoever wrote it, because advice about a living animal should come from someone you can identify rather than from an anonymous house voice.
Samran Awan
Reptiles and enclosure setup
Samran writes the reptile side of the site, which in practice means a great deal about heat, humidity and the gap between what a shop tells you a species needs and what it actually needs. He is most interested in the setup decisions made in the first week, because those are the ones that quietly determine how the next ten years go.
Writes about: Snakes, lizards, geckos, tortoises, heating, lighting and enclosure design.
27 published guides on this site
Zaher Khan
Birds and invertebrates
Zaher covers parrots, softbills and the invertebrates most keepers meet first. Much of what he writes comes back to behaviour rather than equipment, since the problems people describe as health issues in birds turn out, more often than not, to be boredom, noise or a cage placed somewhere the animal finds threatening.
Writes about: Parrots, cockatiels, finches, tarantulas, hermit crabs and enrichment.
20 published guides on this site
Aurangzaib Khan
Small mammals and amphibians
Aurangzaib writes about small mammals and amphibians, two groups that suffer most from being treated as low-maintenance. He spends a lot of time on diet and on water quality, because those are where the slow, invisible damage happens long before an owner notices anything is wrong.
Writes about: Sugar gliders, hedgehogs, chinchillas, axolotls, frogs, diet and water quality.
9 published guides on this site
How we handle accuracy
Care requirements for exotic species vary between sources more than most owners expect, and a good deal of what circulates online is out of date. Where sources disagree we say so rather than picking the tidiest answer, and where something depends on the individual animal we say that too.
Nothing published here is veterinary advice. A guide can tell you what normal looks like and when something is worth taking seriously, but an animal that is unwell needs an exotics vet who can examine it. If you find something on this site that is wrong or has stopped being current, tell us through the contact page and we will correct it.