And you thought the zoo was the only place to see wild animals.

Georgia has 210 kangaroo, 23 dromedary camels, hundreds of piranha, 10 tigers and 18 kinkajous, which by the way, are every bit as cute as they sound.

Andy Sharp / AJC (ENLARGE)

Six-year-old Cameron Barnette gets a friendly nudge from Belle, a 3-month-old camel. Cameron's father is working on a construction project at Runnin' Wild farm.

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And of course, about 50 zebras, including the Atlanta-famous Bar Code and Evidence, which turned up unexpectedly this spring on a college campus building and an interstate.

Outside Zoo Atlanta and the Georgia Aquarium, there are at least 80 different types of non-native and wild animals in the state, according to an AJC analysis of Department of Natural Resources records. With a DNR license and inspection, breeders, retailers and wholesalers can have them. So can exhibitors, like petting zoos, and research institutions, like universities.

"This is the easiest license to get in the world if you know what you're doing and comply with the law," says Todd Nims, a DNR wildlife biologist.

Of course, plenty of wild animals owners live far, far outside the law.

It's impossible to count the numbers of unlicensed illegal animals in the state.

Animals are reported by a keen-eyed neighbor or a poorly chosen confidante, Nims says. The DNR investigates cases constantly, usually a few dozen cases per year, everything from people keeping a deer as a pet to people possessing hundreds of illegal exotics.

Larger animals have habits of making themselves obvious, too, by getting loose, hurting people or sometimes just showing up on Interstate 75, unannounced and unclaimed, like Evidence, who was found there in April.

Evidence ended up at Noah's Ark, an animal rehabilitation center in Locust Grove, along with more than 1,000 other animals of more than 100 different species. The DNR finds legal homes for most unlicensed animals, but the less lucky are euthanized. The call of the wild is strong for humans, if misunderstood. The DNR and animal rescue groups say people enjoy skirting the law, or just disagree with Georgia's relatively strict take on animal ownership.

Consider the tiger. If the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention needed one, it would be inspected and probably approved. Your next-door neighbor, most likely, would not.

"In Alabama, your next-door neighbor can. Personally, I don't want my neighbor to have a tiger," Nims says. "Georgia is fortunate, from my standpoint, to have the best laws in the entire country for possession of wild animals."

But there's money to be made in buying, selling and transporting exotic animals, legally or not. (They're easy to obtain at auctions in nearby states, but they're supposed to be licensed before they enter Georgia.) Some people think they're cute, not realizing a chimp in diapers isn't a baby, and a lion cub grows to be up to be, well, a lion. Vets say Evidence, the zebra, probably was injured falling from a truck as it carried him on the interstate; nobody has claimed him.

"People are always looking for something different, a one-upmanship. You know, 'You have a dog, I have a tiger,'" says Diane Smith, assistant to the director at Noah's Ark . "Bottom line is, they're supposed to be wild."

Some creatures will simply never be licensed here, especially if they could wreak havoc on the ecosystem: giant marine toads, Monk parakeets and parasitic cat fish, like the candiru. In the water, they're capable of swimming up a stream of urine into a human body. If it could get into a fishtank, it could make it to a river. Not welcome here, Nims says.

People who acquired animals illegally usually won't be licensed, either, he says.

But some animals are so common they're no longer regulated so closely.

Gov. Sonny Perdue signed off this year on a bill that yanks water buffalo and sugar gliders off the list requiring the DNR's wild animal license. (People that just want them can buy them. Breeders and sellers need additional licensing.)

That's how the Heaner family of Sandy Springs turned 200 acres into a home for more than 130 animals. They bought Runnin' Wild Farm in Floyd County nearly three years ago. They started with one donkey, then bought a few animals at out-of-state auctions. The Heaners came into DNR compliance and began relying on reputable breeders and dealers. They sell and breed animals like fainting goats, camels, buffalo, zebras, long-horned cows and water buffalo, including one named Blossom, who thinks she's a cow. Vietnamese pigs keep showing up on their land, presumably dumped by people that couldn't take care of the growing piglets.

The farm is part business, part rescue, part weekend getaway. A team of full-timers keep the farm running day-to-day.

Mary Helen Heaner says the business was inspired by their son, a teen animal lover who will be in 10th grade at Wesleyan School in Norcoss next fall.

"It's a never-ending list of to-dos," she says. "We were just so happy to have that one donkey, and it just ballooned and blossomed after that."

The menagerie keeps growing, with new arrivals coming constantly. Humphrey, their Bactrian camel, recently appeared in a Kiss the Camel contest, and always in the local nativity plays. The farm's longhorn logo is branded on everything from the signs to the water bottles.

Their motto: "2Wild4U."

Here are some of the wild animals that have the highest licensed populations in Georgia:

• Fallow and Sika Deer: There are hundreds in the state, but Amicalola Deer Park, a project of the non-profit Rainbow Nation, in Dawson County has the majority of them. For more information, visit www.rainbownation.org.

•Ringtailed lemur: They're native to Madagascar, but more than 60 live in Georgia. Many of them live on the privately owned and undeveloped St. Catherine's Island, off the Georgia Coast about 50 miles south of Savannah.

•Cougar: Several private owners in Georgia have a cougar or two, but many live at Ellijay Wildlife Rehabilitation Sanctuary, a 50-acre facility that cares for animals native to Georgia and the southeast. Learn more about the sanctuary at www.wildliferehabsanctuary.org.

•Muntjac: Ever heard of it? It's a type of short deer native to Southeast Asia. At least three sites in Georgia have them.

Source: Georgia Department of Natural Resources

Matt Dempsey contributed to this report.