Your view of the reptile hobby

[Mikoh4792]

Originally Posted by StudentoReptile

Quite simply, despite what a passionate, vocal minority on forums may say, the hobby is driven by money, which leads to greed, which leads to misinformation.

People get on the internet or go to shows and see all these wacky mutations with outrageous price tags, they think it is a get-rich-quick scheme, then they get into the hobby for all the wring reasons, make wrong decisions, often the animals suffer, then they realize the market for these animals is often a facade and not what they imagined, and by golly, there is actual work involved. Also, there is by-product, and we're getting to the level of cats & dogs. For a longer version of this rant, see my blog posting here.

And that is not all...in the meantime, given this new "hobby" we have where everyone is breeding, and few people keep their animals for longer than a few years. In decades past, reptiles were fairly easy captives and we had few issues with them; most people kept them in wooden enclosures and how often did we hear abotu URIs?. But now, I think we have created problems (some of which are on a larger scale than just genetic mutation quirks), and we are told we have to offer more UV lighting and vitamin supplements, and cricket dust, etc, etc. For more on that, click here. You may want to do some research on nitrate fixation and mycelium, to get a better grasp on that issue.

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Changes and direction for the future? I dunno...getting people to stop focusing on money and greed is a tough obstacle. People think they are being noble, and supporting USARK and organizations like that, but look at most of the big name supporters: just big breeders trying protect their so-called "right" to keep snake in plastic tubs....all so all of everything I described above can continue to go on. Its not a pet store problem, because they just sell what the supply companies tell them to: Exo Terra, ZooMed, Zilla, all of them. Its like anything else in the world. WE are the product, and whatever issue problem breeders come up with and these reptile companies figure out a solution that hobbyists can walk into a store and purchase out of a box, and make money off of....that keeps things going. And many of these products have shown longterm that they are detrimental to the health of herps, not helpful.

I agree with all of this. I understand the novelty of morphs and such, but isn't the fascination with reptiles supposed to be why they are the way they are in nature? To me a normal ball python is much more interesting than a $5000 morph ball. And I often see people commending big breeders for all the hard work they've done to achieve these multi-gene morphs. The way I see it is, the animals are the ones doing all the work, and going through all the stress of producing. All "we" are doing is 1+1=2.

[psychocircus]

Originally Posted by Mikoh4792

I agree with all of this. I understand the novelty of morphs and such, but isn't the fascination with reptiles supposed to be why they are the way they are in nature? To me a normal ball python is much more interesting than a $5000 morph ball. And I often see people commending big breeders for all the hard work they've done to achieve these multi-gene morphs. The way I see it is, the animals are the ones doing all the work, and going through all the stress of producing. All "we" are doing is 1+1=2.

I agree, nature did it right.
That being said, I definitely understand people liking morphs. The issue is almost none of these people buying expensive morphs want them for pets and are most likely putting them right in a rack system and preparing to try to breed them.