It is like making a human live his life in a Para pool, obviously with the water drained first.
Colin's discounted pets owner and captive animal expert Colin McFeast believes the recent attack on a human by a killer whale at Sea World was bound to happen.
Colin, who is best known as "Colin the Hamster Man" from the hit reality show The Hamster Man, says he was not
at all surprised when he heard about the attack.
"I was not at all surprised when I heard about the attack.
"It was a time-bomb situation, an accident waiting to happen.
"If you throw a cat among the pigeons, you are going to get burnt. It's six of one, half a dozen of the other, really; a real horses for courses situation!"
Killer whales at Sea World are kept in large tanks but, relatively speaking, it is like making a human being live out his life in a Para pool, obviously with the water drained first.
There simply isn't enough space to move around or have any sort of quality of life.
Colin, an alcoholic by day, believes it is this institutionalising of a large mammal that led to the unfortunate attack.
But Colin himself is no stranger to controversy.
His Dominion Rd pet store received 17 official warnings from the SPCA for breaches of health and safety, and for "unusual practices" when keeping animals in captivity.
In two cases the animals had to be granted interim name suppression.
Perhaps the highest-profile case occurred in 2008, when Colin was fined for keeping rare jungle parrots in glass fish tanks instead of cages.
Apparently, as a result of poor stock-taking, he sold more cages than he did birds, meaning many of the parrots were temporarily homeless.
After 17 years in the pet store business, Colin believes he can see some parallels between what happened at Sea World and some of the things he has had to deal with in a struggling pet store.
"It has been reported as a freak accident but it is a well-known fact that orcas - or killer whales - are actually quite intelligent, and that they are more closely related to dolphins than to whales, and because we are also related to dolphins we need to treat them in a more humane manner."
Colin, who considers himself a wildlife behaviour expert, believes that in all likelihood this was a premeditated attack and the highly intelligent whale may have planned it for weeks, if not months.
There is no record of a human ever having been killed by a killer whale in the wild, yet a number of people have been killed at marine parks like Sea World.
Colin believes this suggests that although we are not strictly on the menu, so to speak, we do seem to have the propensity to "piss them off" on occasion.
He believes that this probably comes about from humans forcing them to, quite literally, jump through hoops every time they want something - be it attention or something to eat.
"It is bad enough that we hold them in captivity, but forcing them to perform in a manner that isn't natural, such as ringing bells before they get a fish or flipping a ball into a basketball hoop, is not fair and, generally, not something they would be doing in the wild."
Colin claims to offer some freedom to his in-store animals.
Rats can sometimes be seen roaming free range about the store, and many of his birds can be seen perched free of cages, but this in itself has caused issues.
In the past year, with the onset of the rainy season, he has seen three migratory jungle parrots fly into an electric fan.
This is something that wouldn't normally happen in the rainforests of Ecuador, where the birds originated from.
By all accounts, Colin had removed the guard from the fan to increase airflow around the store and it was while doing this that he lost his index finger and the tip of his tongue.
Like many home handymen, Colin had a tendency to stick out his tongue when concentrating while using a Phillips screwdriver.
Colin believes he has much to offer on the "animals in captivity" debate and says his lines are always open, should any of the world's zoos or marine aquariums want to reach him.
Colin's lines may be open metaphorically speaking, but technically speaking his phone lines have been disconnected and you will need to get hold of him through the kebab shop next door.
