Yeah - I was about 10 when a neighbor was (or at least rumored to be) setting up to make a fortune raising them for their incredibly valuable fur.
Of course, not every critter has a coat of the proper texture and color, but nevermind - just look at what those pelts bring!
They had those in the back of boys magazines and even an episode of Leave it to Beaver IIRC. The thought horrifies me because my pet chinchilla watches those shows with me sometimes. Puffy is a smart boy and as personable and friendly as any dog. They also live longer than dogs at 20+ years plus they don’t smell, need little care and are fairly cheap to keep but their personalities vary greatly among individuals.
Ironically, the fur fad is one of the main things that saved them as a species because they are critically endangered to near extinct in the wild depending on the subspecies. They do quite well as pets as long as they have an attentive owner but they are quite scarce in their native habitat today. The domestic ones came from only a few breeding pairs caught in South America.
My vote is for monkeys, miniature dolphins, and genetically modified parrot like birds.
Sheep and goats both make terrible pets.
As to - how cities will look in the future, 100 years is a relatively short timeline, but I see population density going up dramatically - it’s not about space, but rather about convenience, commuting, fossil fuels, traffic etc etc - while there might be space, people will naturally condense around amenities and facilities. (says the farm boy that can’t wait to get back to the farm)
Speaking as someone who’s worked with both, monkeys and meerkats are both pretty awful pets.
The very things that make them so attractive, their intelligence and sociable behaviour mean that they require constant attention, or they frankly get messed up, which in monkeys often manifests as being vicious and unpredictable, and in meerkats tends to look very much like severe depression and tends to result in an early death from stress related disease.
Their natural behaviour is geared round spending all their time in at least a pair, and generally a group of their own species, and it’s really impractical for the vast majority of people to provide an adequate substitution for that. It is possible to keep a group, but then they don’t really bond or interact much with humans in the way that would make them appealing as pets.
Probably something that hasn’t been genetically engineered yet. Like a fantastapotomas.
I was wondering about that, they don't appear to be all that intelligent either. They are cute to watch in their own enviroment but would not likely fit well into a home.
If you could breed an 18# polar bear you might have a winner.
Chicago specifically is probably going to have a lot more population in 100 years, but that’s because people will be moving there from other cities. There’s no reason to expect urban populations in general to rise.
Manicorns.
The most popular pet in 100 years will have batteries. Almost all the upsides of a live critter and none of the downsides.
Almost all of us who go “eww!” at the prospect will be dead and gone before they become popular with kids who grew up with talking devices.
Exotics like monkeys and meerkats aren’t going to be anything other than tiny niches as they are today. Absent magical levels of genetic engineering exotics have enough downsides in personality, hazard, or cost as to be impractical for all but specialists and crazies.
We’re not going to create nice enough e.g. raccoons in a mere couple dozen generations to make them anything near mainstream.
You joke but my mother - the type of person who intentionally feeds raccoons - really wants a wallaby. They don’t seem to be legal in NH, bummer.