Instead of meeting soft fur, your hand gently glides across smooth scales. Instead of pink toe pads leaving grubby paw prints across the floor, you see the swift scuttle of six small, spiny legs digging through dirt. Instead of throwing balls for fetch or pointing red laser toys across the living room, you watch massive keratin shells absorb sunlight while their owners slowly munch away on kale. The animal kingdom is full of curious creatures, but humans have historically found companionship in other mammals, especially as dogs and cats were domesticated for their usefulness to human settlements. Classes like Insecta or Reptilia are less commonly chosen as pets.

Susan Linares (10) always loved animals. Three years ago, Linares hoped to get a snake, but another reptile caught her eye.

It was a bearded dragon, with neat rows of tiny spikes around its neck and a long, patterned tail. The moment Linares saw him, she “just fell in love.” She named him Thor.

“I just looked at him, and I was like, ‘that’s the one,’” Linares said.

Linares’s family has also had a box turtle named Stich since before Linares was born.

“I’m a huge animal lover just for any animal,” Linares said. “Me and my dad have loved [reptiles] for so long.”

Kingsley Romande (10), whose family has also “always loved animals,” has owned what seems like all pets imaginable, including spiders and a vast range of reptiles.

“I had 20 snakes at one point,” Romande said. “I have had a bunch of lizards, like 30 leopard geckos [and] a bunch of crested geckos, and they all had babies. And then we had chameleons too, and they also had babies. It was a lot [of reptiles] for a while, especially during COVID, [when] it was really easy to take care of them all because I was home all the time.”

Romande currently owns nine giant tortoises, each of which has a lifespan of approximately 100 years.

“No one knows what to do with tortoises, because they get them when they were, like, really tiny, and then they get bigger and bigger,” Romande said. “People don’t know what to do with them, but we have the land to be able to take care of them.”

Her biggest tortoises are named Bruiser and Cruiser. Romande has noticed that each tortoise has a distinct personality. She describes Bruiser as a “very friendly” tortoise who loves people and, “will come up to you and come bump into you.” Her other tortoises can be shy, or even troublesome.

“The meanest tortoise that we have, he has his own little area, and he’ll try and flip everyone over,” Romande said. “He’s kind of a brat.”

This idea that every individual animal, no matter the species, has its own unique personality is echoed by Audrey Chi (11). Chi has, periodically, owned Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches since elementary school. She currently has a “small colony” of around 15 cockroaches. Chi believes that “almost every single animal has a personality of some sort.”

“There’s one [cockroach] that’s missing an antenna and it hisses more,” Chi said. “There’s [another] one that hangs out around the bush more often than the other ones.”

Chi has liked bugs since childhood. She used to find them outside and catch them, but eventually decided to take this interest to the next level instead of just capturing “any random bug” by extensively researching different cockroach species.

“Some species [are] very expensive because they’re really rare, but they’re really pretty,” Chi said. “[One] of the species I want to keep when I grow up … [are] green and they can roll into balls. Or some of them are like isopods, where they can turn into balls. That’s one of the really interesting ones. [Then there’s] Giant Australian cockroaches, which are the dream, because they can’t climb, they’re docile and they live for [around] 10 years.”

Chi eventually decided on the Madagascar hissing cockroach because they are “readily available” and low maintenance. This species’ lifespan is two to five years, and Chi has kept one alive for three years. Some of them have many nymphs, or baby cockroaches, too.

“They won’t bite, they’re really docile [and] you can probably not feed them for weeks or so, and they’re still really healthy,” Chi said.

Chi feeds them at least twice a week, and then lets them “go hog wild.” She keeps them in a tank that holds approximately 40 gallons.

In contrast, Romande’s giant tortoises live on vast, spacious farmland.

“In the mornings, they sit in this dog house that we built for them, and we have to let them out everyday,” Romande said. “And then they get lettuce and any vegetables or scraps that we have from our kitchen or our garden. Around sunset, we put them back in. They’re pretty easy [to take care of].”

Other tortoise owners also observe their pets’ daily routines. Jakob Tu’s (12) Desert Tortoise named Franklin is a childhood pet, and with a lifespan of up to 100 years, Franklin will likely be Tu’s companion for years to come.

“He does a lot of sunbathing,” Tu said. “He loves just sitting in the bright sun. He has a little pool that sometimes, during the summer when it’s really hot, he’ll go into. He eats a lot, [and] he’s a slow eater, so that takes up a good amount of time. It’s a lot of just eating, sleeping, relaxing.”

Caring for uncommon pets requires more research, as previously demonstrated Chi’s cockroach research rabbit hole. Instead of litter boxes or squeaky bones, these creatures might require Ultra Violet (UV) lights or regulated enclosures.

Biology and Anatomy and Physiology teacher Lindsey Olson’s family has a pet bearded dragon named Fred. For the Olsons, taking care of Fred is “like a science experiment.”

“[Bearded dragons] can be a little finicky on what they’re eating and keeping the temperature consistent,” Olson said. “So they like more of a desert environment, [and that’s] not exactly what we have. So [we need] heating lights and UV lights and making sure he’s getting enough sunlight … The coast is very different [from] the desert, and so you try and emulate their habitat as much as you can in their enclosures.”

Similarly, Linares had to research how much light wattage she needed for Thor’s enclosure. Linares feeds kale, tomatoes and carrots to Thor and Stitch every day, with a special side of mealworms for Thor.

“I have a little kiddie pool for both of them so they can swim around in the daytime and bathe in the sun,” Linares said.

Tu’s tortoise Franklin has a specially designed play area.

“I remember being a little kid with my brother and designing his area, which was really fun,” Tu said. “[We had to] dig out a little pool area and fence it off, but now he free roams everywhere.”

Being biologically unlike humans in many ways, these pets’ expressions of love are often subtle from a human perspective. Instead of tail wagging or slow blinks, one might observe the flick of a forked tongue or the prickly grip of small claws.

“My bearded dragon loves to snuggle,” Linares said. “He goes onto my shoulder, and he just finds the warmth up here. He sleeps a lot, [and] he loves giving kisses with his tongue. I call them kisses, because every time I see him, he always licks my finger. I find that as something really affectionate.”

For many, the wonder of having an unconventional pet lies in their biological features.

“Some of the unexpected things with him [were] watching him molt and lose his skin, and then having to get that skin out of his enclosure,” Olson said. “[Then], oddly enough, excrement … when he actually poops, and it’s so few and far between, but when he does, it’s like, ‘whoa.’”

Similarly, Chi is captivated just by watching the behavior of her critter friends.

“I like watching them do their own little silly thing where they kind of run around hiss,” Chi said. “Or, when I open the lights, they freeze what they’re doing. I think it’s really silly. It’s just fun to watch.”

Chi emphasizes the distinction between pest and pet, highlighting that the majority of cockroaches are nonpest species. Out of the 4,500 total cockroach species in the world, only 30 are considered pests, according to Smithsonian Magazine.

“I think my cockroaches are really good and they’re always really sweet,” Chi said. “I hate pest species, [so] I feel like it’s important to be able to distinguish between [them].”

Chi believes that there’s “nothing to be afraid of with bugs.”

“People tend to overact in my opinion whenever the see something like a large beetle and to me, its just another animal trying to get by,” Chi said. “Plus, they’re completely harmless and you can just wash your hands after if it lands on you or if you pick it up.”

Romande also rejects the stigma surrounding unpopular pets.

“[Unconventional pets] are so misunderstood,” Romande said. “People see them as scary, when really they’re not.”

As a biology teacher, Olson sees every organism as a unique piece of nature’s puzzle.

“It just [shows] how intricate and different and delicate each piece of life is around us,” Olson said.