Japan’s animal cafes — venues that offer customers the chance to interact with exotic species over a cup of coffee — are popular with both locals and tourists alike.

Despite concerns for the well-being of the animals involved, who often spend their days in small, loud, and unpredictable spaces, these coffee shops continue to thrive and, according to this study, are licensed in the same way as zoos. Although companion animals like cats are commonly selected for animal cafes, it’s now also typical to find an array of wild animals — from penguins to parakeets — on display too.

In this study, researchers from Japan and the U.K. investigated welfare standards in exotic animal cafes, and whether some types of animals are better cared for than others.

Welfare Assessments

Four trained observers visited 79 cafes across Japan’s most accessible and popular tourist destinations, including Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba, Osaka, Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Okinawa. They focused on cafes with wild animals or a combination of wild and domestic animals only.

Between October 2019 and August 2020, the observers collected data discreetly during opening hours, presenting as paying members of the public, with each visit lasting up to two hours. The research was observation only and didn’t include any animal handling.

To assess the welfare of the animals, the observers focused on five areas:

1. Behaviors (e.g., animals able to perform species-appropriate behaviors, positive social interactions between animals)
2. Environment (e.g., space allowance, temperature, animals in appropriate social groupings, hiding places available)
3. Interactions with people (e.g., time limits on interactions, animals able to leave an interaction at any point)
4. Nutrition and feeding (e.g., animals given species-appropriate diets, visitors able to feed animals, fresh water available)
5. Use of restraints (e.g., animals kept on ropes, leads, or chains)

Due to limited time at the cafes and the large number of species spotted, the team gathering data used quick welfare check forms to record their findings. These featured questions based on the five areas above and a simple scoring system. Higher scores indicated better living conditions, and where there was more than one animal of the same species in the same cafe, the score considered the whole group.

Based on these findings, the researchers then examined whether there were differences in the quality of care provided to different types of animals at the cafes. They did this by calculating average animal welfare scores in each of the five focus areas and comparing the results for mammals, birds, and reptiles.

Spilling The Tea: What The Results Revealed

The researchers assessed a total of 231 individual animals or groups of animals from the same species (see the table below). Overall, 51% were mammals, 31% were birds, and 18% were reptiles. The most common wild animals encountered were birds of prey and the least common were penguins and primates.

The study also found evidence of differences in the quality of care provided to the different animal types, with birds enduring some of the lowest welfare standards. The results showed:

• Reptiles and mammals, with some exceptions (like otters), had higher environmental scores than birds, mainly because most birds’ environments prevented them from flying. However, regardless of species, environmental scores were generally low due to a lack of areas to hide and an absence of features like pools that would allow for swimming and other natural behaviors.
• Birds also scored lower than reptiles and most mammals for nutrition. Many owls, for instance, were tethered to perches without free access to water. Mammal scores were likely higher because it can be easier to accommodate the dietary requirements and feeding behaviors of species like rabbits and hamsters that are commonly kept as companion animals.
• Mammals scored higher than birds when it came to expressing normal behaviors, as many birds were restrained and prevented from flying. As such, birds had a much lower welfare score than mammals and reptiles for use of restraints. However, some mammals like fennec foxes, otters, and meerkats were also observed being kept on leads.

Interactions with visitors were judged to have the same negative impact on animal welfare across animal types. This was due to the stress of forced and largely unsupervised interactions, which the animals were unable to escape from.

The data was collected during the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning there may have been fewer visitors. However, the observers accommodated for this by basing their assessment on the quality of the interactions rather than the number of visitors. The study also acknowledged that being able to observe the animals for just short amounts of time, and only during business hours, meant that it was sometimes difficult to get a full picture of behaviors such as quality of rest.

Overall, the research reveals that Japan’s exotic animal cafes aren’t equipped to provide suitable levels of care. The study found that the welfare standards for animals in the cafes visited were very low across all areas considered and across all types of animals. A lack of space, limited opportunities to express natural behaviors, uncontrolled encounters with humans, use of restraints, and few chances to feed in species-appropriate ways were just some of the factors found to impact animal well-being.

Believed to be the first in-depth study of its kind looking at welfare in Japan’s exotic animal cafes, the study concludes by highlighting the need for better laws and practices to be put in place to protect captive wild animals, while urging readers to consider whether there’s really a role for these businesses in today’s world.