Where there any places/islands that were deemed popular for selling animals?
what were the most common and the rarest animals on the market?
were exotic animals won as prizes from games? (i.e. some sort of board games? If any existed at the time?)
You might be interested in this answer of mine about birds as pets: Were there actually birds on ships in the 19th century, or is the pirate with a parrot on his shoulder entirely a Disney invention?
Monkeys were another exotic animal that sailors traded as pets. The Dutch painter Rembrandt living in the Netherlands in the 17th century owned a monkey and he even insisted on painting it into one of his human portraits after it died (The World of Rembrandt: 1606-1669 by Robert Wallace). Europe would have been the most profitable market to sell exotic tropical animals, and sailors returning to Europe from the tropics did sometimes cheaply buy exotic pets as an investment to sell back home.