Let's vent:What really ticks you off about the pet trade!

[Hornets23]

In my opinion preservation is in our interest.

[mycolorfulheart]

In my opinion preservation is in our interest.

Agreed! It's comforting (to me) to know that life will bounce back in the future. But in the short term we're poisoning our world and wasting our resources. Also sustainable industry is almost always better for the poor and middle class. Stripping an area of its resources generates alot of wealth, but it goes to big business, not to the regular folk who NEED the environment to survive.
Ok, rant over.

[Bill]

I just want to wrap this up by saying yes there have been mass extinctions in the past. the planet for the most part has always been here and for the most part barring any interstellar catastrophe always will be. I just want to bring up two cases to help make a point. the first is what was found by the first survey teams to go to the Bikini atoll after the hydrogen bomb detonation. The island for the most part was vaporized. How ever two species were found alive. Rats and roaches. These species survived because they were believed to be under ground at the time of the blast. The island now looks similar to the way it was before the blast. However it is still uninhabitable to humans do to the high levels of radiation. I will get to my point in a minute. two. I would like to point out the situation in Ethiopia. If you ever have a chance to see air recon photos of Ethiopia from WWII you will see a country that was covered in rain forest. first the country was slashed and burned. Grass was planted for live stock to graze. This was the first transformation from rain forest to savannah. Now that there was no wood to be had people had to adapt. shelters had be constucted from mud and grass much like that of the early settlers of the plains states here in the US. Because there was no more fire wood people had to adapt. They had to use balls of manure,dried, then burned for cooking.Now, when the rain forest was gone, so went the rain. When they had to remove all the manure, so went the fertilizer for the grass. When the grass died from a lack of fertilizer and rain the top soil blew away. Now we are witnessing another mass extinction. That of the Ethiopian people. Time frame,about seventy years. I don't stay awake at night worrying about the next species to go extinced. It happens all the time. Yes voids in a biotope are quickly filled by other species and this planet was here long before we were and it will be here long after. My worries are a lot less noble and a lot more selfish. We are not making this planet uninhabitable. We are making it uninhabitable for us! Now I know NASA has a plan. They want to build a moon base and colonize mars. Lets just ponder that one for a moment. We all know or should know by now just how hard it is to create a biotope for our own exotic pets. In some cases it has been so cost prohibitive that some species can only be kept at zoos and national aquariums and some have been declared all but impossible to keep in captivity. So how well do you think we will all do on mars? I think we would all be better off spending that money on fixing up the old place. I don't care about the big bang theory. How I got here doesn't really matter much to me. Fact is,I am here and I would like to stick around. So I make sure I don't pour toxic chemicals and feces down my well and I don't burn toxic substances in my home and when I hunt or fish I try to take only what I need. All I ask is that others will show me that same courtesy. I enjoy the fact that I am not the only species on this planet as well. Not because I want to frolic around the forest like Snow White in a Disney movie but because I like to eat and most of these critters are quite tasty. So it seems that it is in my best interest to look out for them and the things they eat. I don't care for the alternative. Sucking synthetic proteins out of a tube. I am sorry that these posts are not directed to anyone in particular. I have to frase them as more of a shout out. My typeing skills are poor and my time is short. I do want to respond to your posts as best I can and I hope you see my point. Thank you for taking the time to write and I hope you all have a great day!

Bill

[Bill]

I just want to take up another minute of your time if I may. The people on this site have been great and I would like to thank you all for your help and friendship. I wanted to try to show some appreciation by creating a thread. My intent was to give you all a place to vent. Please use it however you like. My hope is that it can be used to help all of you get through the everyday grind. Sometimes your just having a bad day and writeing about it will make you feel a little better. Sometimes you have a problem. Maybe some of us can help. Maybe you are just so frustrated about something and feel that there is nothing that can be done about. Maybe haveing a place to just shout out loud will help or maybe,just maybe it will make you feel a little better. Maybe reading about someone elses problems will make you feel a little better about your own. Maybe, you wont feel so isolated and alone. Do with it what you will but I think you should give it a try.

All The Best!
Bill

[sschind]

We can wipe out 95% of all species and still have a functioning ecosystem. It's very sensitive to disturbances at that point (which is the real problem), but it should still work.

I did pull that "95%" out of my arse, but it's not far from the estimated figure, which I'll have to try to look up when I get home. The point was that the ecosystem can endure pretty damn much before it starts to collapse. Apparently, this has actually been tested.

I'd like to see that test. I would like to know what they mean by collapse and what they consider an ecosystem, and weather or not they consider an ecosystem with 95% less diversity an equitable one.

You can take 955 of the books out of a library and it would still be a library but would anyone want to visit.

[Stefan-A]

I'd like to see that test. I would like to know what they mean by collapse and what they consider an ecosystem, and weather or not they consider an ecosystem with 95% less diversity an equitable one.

Well, ecosystem already has a definition.

You can take 955 of the books out of a library and it would still be a library but would anyone want to visit.

Depends on which books you take and how many it had to begin with. That's the point. Compare the Library of Congress to your local library.

Library of Congress - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Zephyr]

Well honestly, even if you were to take out all the topic-specific books and leave the encyclopedias and whatnot, you'd never get the details and all of the other intricacies of a topic-specific book...

[sschind]

Cool thread!!
I agree with this in general but I disagree with a few of the statements...
This is how the general public views garters, yeah. But I had to say that:

1. Most of my garters are not flighty and many where even wild caught adults. Certainly no more flighty then your average king, corn or milk!

2. NONE of my garters musk. I have dozens...

3. Baby kings, corns, milks and balls can be even more of a pain in the **** to feed. If not sometimes moreso then garters...

4. Try finding the right garter, at the right time, right when you want it.
And then try and find the species you want that isn't local.
And then try finding some morphs. Honestly. You can find kings, corns and milks in the wild too! Most people who are looking for a pet aren't going to know where to look when they want one.
And if you want a puget, flame or whatever well... Good luck!

But yeah. That would be how the general public would see it. So I completely understand where you are coming from. But you failed to mention that these are just "myths".

Anyways! Back on topic!

It seems as though this thread has strayed a bit.

Amanda: you must be far more lucky with garters than I am. My puget sound babies (well more like young juveniles now) are all over the place and they both musk like crazy. My two baby melanistic easterns, same thing, as well as my yearling red sided male. My adult eastern Blacknecks are very mellow and the female has been from day one. The male was always a bit flighty but even as tiny babies they were not bad and they did not musk. My T.e.elegans are adults and while not as mellow as the female E. blackneck they are handleable without a great deal of trouble. It seems that as they age they mellow out. At least I hope so. As far as feeding, yes, they are easy to feed. If you want to deal with guppies or worms or something of that nature. Yes they may switch to mice but even if they switch readily it takes a quite a while for them to get big enough to take a pinky. Yes there are pinky parts but thats another messy step.

The problem with all of this as it relates to this thread is the pet industry. Most people who buy snakes as pets don't want squimy, squirty, psycho babies that require special steps to feed, and most pet stores do not want to or can't afford to buy babies and do all the work and take all the time to get them to a point where they are acceptable to most people. Hence, garters are considered second or third class citizens of the pet snake world. At least here in the US. What is the saying "familiarity breeds contempt" Attitudes may differ in Other countries but I am not in another country so I have to go by what I experience.


Bill: I think we agree more than we disagree. I will make one point though about the panther chameleons and my experience with them and keep in mind this experience is probably almost 2 years old. I know one breeder (yes just one breeder) who sells unsexed 2 month old panthers at local swaps for $150.00 to $175.00 She said if I wanted to buy 3 or more she would let me have them for $125.00. That would mean I would have to ask about $250.00. She sells sexable females for starting at $200 and males for $00.00 to $500.00 depending on things. Why would anyone buy a possible female from me for $250.00 when they could wait a few more months and get a male for only $50.00 more? My point is she thought she was doing me a great service offering them to me for $125.00. If she offered me sexed males then yeah, I could compete but not knowing what I would be getting made it not worth the chance. I know this does not take into consideration the WC issue but it does address the price issue. Then consider that my competitors are buying WC adults and selling them for $250.00-$300.00 and try to figure out how I am supposed to compete and still offer you what you consider a fair price for yours.

I'll weigh in on the Planet Earth thing simply by saying this (and others have said it as well) You are not trying to save the earth. You are trying to save the earth as it relates to your survival. While there is nothing wrong with that, it might behoove you to make the distinction. It doesn't make you sound like such a wacko.

By the way. the show sucked as it usually does for me. Its too early in the year and non of my babies are ready to go yet. Even the oldest ones have at most 4 meals in them. It doesn't pay for me to take my leopard geckos because anything I have pales in comparison to the ones Jeremy Letkey has and his prices are pretty good. I breed them for sale in the store mostly. I did pick up four decent sized, very orange dragons for a good price, a couple of CBB pictus geckos and I traded a few old used tanks for a couple of couple of dart frogs.

[sschind]

Well, ecosystem already has a definition.

Depends on which books you take and how many it had to begin with. That's the point. Compare the Library of Congress to your local library.

Library of Congress - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Which definition is that. If you take an ecosystem with 1 million different species and take away 95% that still leaves 50,000 species. That ecosystem will probably survive, but, is that ecosystem as diverse and as stable as the ecosystem that it replaced. Certainly not as diverse and not as likely as stable.

The 995 I typed should have been 95% which I am sure you figured out. The point is, 95% less of anything that is generally considered a good thing is not as good, and diversity, be it in an ecosystem or a library, is generally considered a good thing. Now if that 95% just happened to eliminate all the bad things then I suppose you consider it a good thing but if we expect that th 95% would be applied equally across the board to both good and bad things then that would not be the case (I think you can follow that)

To take it back a bit, what I think you are saying, and I am not trying to put words into your mouth, rather just stating my interpretation of your comments so correct me if I am wrong, is that the extinction of a few species or even a few dozen or even a few hundred or thousand is not going to make a difference. If this is what you are saying then I agree with you 100%. To be perfectly honest I find it to be more than a little extreme that some people will stand in the way of progress to save some subspecies of animal which is more than abundant in other parts of the world. I am talking about progress that will be a benefit to mankind like a windmill farm or solar farm (if those are correct terms) and not just another shopping mall or subdivision.

My point is, and I am not sure how the original post came to this point, is that an ecosystem devoid of 95% of its original makeup is not as desirable as the original. That is my opinion and you can make points that might sway that opinion a bit but unless it is a really compelling argument (like the elimination of disease) then I won't change my mind.

This is a good thread and even though it seems to be leading away from the original intention of the site (Thamnophis) I enjoy discussions like this.

[Stefan-A]

Which definition is that. If you take an ecosystem with 1 million different species and take away 95% that still leaves 50,000 species. That ecosystem will probably survive, but, is that ecosystem as diverse and as stable as the ecosystem that it replaced. Certainly not as diverse and not as likely as stable.

Which is what I said early on.

It's very sensitive to disturbances at that point (which is the real problem), but it should still work.

To take it back a bit, what I think you are saying, and I am not trying to put words into your mouth, rather just stating my interpretation of your comments so correct me if I am wrong, is that the extinction of a few species or even a few dozen or even a few hundred or thousand is not going to make a difference. If this is what you are saying then I agree with you 100%.

Good.

To be perfectly honest I find it to be more than a little extreme that some people will stand in the way of progress to save some subspecies of animal which is more than abundant in other parts of the world. I am talking about progress that will be a benefit to mankind like a windmill farm or solar farm (if those are correct terms) and not just another shopping mall or subdivision.

Depends on your definition of progress.