Possession of servals and other small cats should be regulated, but certainly not banned...

People who either oppose private ownership of exotic cats outright, or don't understand anything about it will often give one or more of the following arguments against private exotic cat ownership--

Click on the links above to examine the logic (or lack of) behind each of them, and see the facts involved with each of these arguments.

Whenever you go to a website that supports banning exotic animals from private possession, there is rarely any supporting data...
the logic is usually what you'd expect from an 8-year old, non-existent, or just flagrantly wrong; and often they flat-out lie to you. Typically there's just a little bit of text on the page regurgitating the same old cliches. Sometimes there'll be pictures they claim are animals in abusive conditions (or that they claim came from abusive conditions), but their arguments are almost always based solely on emotional appeals--never on an honest discussion of the facts.

Here is a perfect example, the following text is from a representative website. This is all the real writing there was on the entire webpage. Almost all the rest of the page was links and a few pictures. Many of the links were for the reader to make a donation. Here it is:

"The bottom line is wild/exotic animals do not make good pets. These animals are wild and will never be tame or domesticated. Tame is often times associated with domesticated. A better way to describe wild/exotic animals in captivity is imprinted. Imprinted is when an animal becomes familiar with people and are no longer afraid of people, but the animal remains wild. Wild animals in captivity still have tremendous strength, innate (or instinctive) behaviors, and should never be trusted. Domestication takes THOUSANDS of years to accomplish and some animals just will never be domesticated.

We strongly discourage people from keeping wild/exotic animals as pets. Although the following links provide facts about why exotic/wild felines and primates should not be kept as pets, we feel that the information applies to other wild/exotic (including "hybrids and cross breeds") animals as well."

Let's look at the above piece of argumentative writing in a little more detail--a phrase at a time:

"The bottom line is wild/exotic animals do not make good pets.": Here's the holier-than-thou argument that you and I are not good-enough or smart-enough to make our own decision as to what kind of animal we want for a companion. Or perhaps the writer thinks that we simply should not be accorded the right to decide that for ourselves--that it's better for someone else (like them) to decide it for us.
"These animals are wild and will never be tame or domesticated.": No one knows for sure whether the exotic cats (as a group) can all be domesticated (or not) in the long run. But it's sometimes claimed that even our little "domesticated" house cats aren't really that domesticated, either. And as easily as some species of wild cats (e.g., servals and cheetahs) adapt to living with Man, one could make an argument that at least some of the wild species would actually be possible to domesticate.
"Tame is often times associated with domesticated.": This is somewhat true, and it's mostly because many people are very careless with how they use their words when they talk or write about things. Our thinking tends to reflect how we talk about things (and vice versa), so this may be an issue of careless, imprecise talk, or thought.
"Wild animals in captivity still have tremendous strength, innate (or instinctive) behaviors, and should never be trusted.": This statement may be true of the large species of cats, large nonhuman primates,and other large wild species--but here they are doing what is very often done by people trying to ban exotic animals. They state what appears to be a truth about a few species, but word the statement to include ALL species, regardless of whether it truthfully applies to all species, or not. Then they use that partially-true statement to argue that ALL exotic animals should be banned. It's quite a stretch to say that an 8 or 9-pound Geoffroy's cat has "tremendous strength". It's also quite a stretch to say that a 3-pound kinkajou has "tremendous strength".
"Domestication takes THOUSANDS of years to accomplish and some animals just will never be domesticated.": Fact--domestic dogs and cats HAVE BEEN LIVING WITH people for thousands of years, as evidenced by the animal remains found in archaeological digs of human habitations around the world. That does NOT mean that it necessarily TOOK thousands of years for them to become domesticated. The fact that their remains were found with those of ancient humans would, in fact, mean that they were ALREADY domesticated for all those years, or else their remains would not have been found anywhere near those of people. 25,000 years from now, are archaeologists going to find grizzly bear remains along with human remains where our cities now are?? No. People who use this "domestication takes thousands of years" argument obviously have not read about (or choose to ignore) the work done by Belyaev [1] and his colleagues during the last years of the Soviet Union in the famous "fox farm experiment." In that experiment, foxes' degree of tame-ability were SIGNIFICANTLY increased in only about 40 years. All they did was to use tameness as their sole criteria for selecting which offspring to allow to breed. During that time significant physiological changes were noted, as well. A vastly far cry from the "thousands of years" that some people tell us it took to domesticate the animals we have today.
"Although the following links provide facts about why exotic/wild felines and primates should not be kept as pets, we feel that the information applies to other wild/exotic (including "hybrids and cross breeds") animals as well.": The links referenced go to a page with misrepresentations and misinformation intermixed with some facts. For example, they claim that "Bobcats and servals will eat about 30 pounds of meat each week!" Fact--fully-grown exotic felines (regardless of species) should be expected to eat about 2 percent of their body weight per day. If a serval weighs 40 pounds, that means about 5.6 pounds per week. The numbers they quoted for big cats were also ridiculously exagerated. And here's where they get the jab in against all the hybrids (like ban proponents often do)--when they claim that all they've just said applies to all hybrids,as well as wild animals.

So there you have a mini-disection of some of the other arguments that ban proponents often use. When someone makes a claim, we need to look at what's really being said, and stop and think if it makes sense, or not.

[1] "Early canid domestication: the farm-fox experiment" (Lyudmila N. Trut) American Scientist March 1, 1999