large herp collection welfare?

[Zak]

Originally Posted by Meko

like throwing some predators in? how about housing lizards and snakes together? or slinging an eagle in the viv too.
maybe zoos should have poachers.

but they're not wild caught, they're brought up from a generation of snakes living the same way.
How does a 6th generation snake know what it should be like?

Now, now. Predation and disease is something we have to readily accept is not beneficial to a captive animal, whether the keeper is attempting to recreate its natural environment or not. It would ridiculous to say that in an animals best interest to be stimulated it should therefore be hunted.

I agree they're not wild caught but as Metaphysicalninja said a lot of behaviour exhibited by animals is innate and based on instinct. If an animals scared, the fight or flight response is exhibited, this is true of animals out in the wild or your umpteenth generation pet dog. Tinbergen has done some fabulous studies looked at learned vs innate behaviour, quite a few of those were in birds meaning drawing parallels to reptiles is slightly easier (determined to have similar cognitive abilities overall). Is the exhibition of innate behaviour not just as crucial as learned? Should an environment not promote an entire repertoire of behaviour not just those favoured by the keeper? Ie, busy vivariums allowing animals multiple hiding spaces and the ability to move about without feeling exposed vs the barer, easier to keep and easier on the eye of the keeper?

Reptiles (as far as i know) have very little learned behaviour, indicating a limited ability to gain from the experience of others. If the experience of others can not be used, surely the innate experience of the species would be drawn into action. A certain hardwiring of the nervous system must be in place, allowing the animal to know how and where to hunt, when to be active etc, if this wasn't the case then how would the animal function? Especially as very little parental care is given within reptiles as a whole.

In no way am i having a go at any keeper, as long as their herps are happy, eating and breeding well something is obviously right.

Oakelm - never knew Morrisons did such large RUB's, i do like how half the herp community turn into Blue Peter, producing things they made earlier from the unlikeliest of stuff and usually ending up with products better than half of those on the market.

[vetdebbie]

Keeping animals in easy to clean environments doesn't mean they have to be environmentally boring. Our corns are in rub racks and we find them easy to maintain, but they have substrate that they can bury into (we're using aspen at the moment), they have hides (only the one in smaller rubs, but 2 or 3 in the big ones) and stuff to climb on. All our hides are cardboard - visually appealing, no, easy to clean, yes (bin, start again). Some of them have branches to climb on - again, if they get skanky they get binned, and we raid our garden for more. Some of the just have more random pieces of cardboard to climb on - depends how windy it's been at the time as to the branch availability! So from our snakes are concerned they have much the same environment in a rub rack as they would in a viv in our lounge. The only difference is to us - i wouldn't want any of our rubs as a display in our lounge!

And before there are any comments, all branches are removed of spikey bits, f10'd, allowed to dry, then baked before encountering a snake.

[fantapants]

i kept all of my adult royals in a viv stack until i felt that i needed to move them to a rub rack due to space issues. i felt a tiny bit guilty until i took the viv stack apart. it looked fine........until it was in bits. i cant even begin to describe how much cack and shite had seeped into the cracks and joins ( even though they were sealed with silicone). i was pretty much horrified and i realise how lucky i was that i hadnt lost any of my animals to infection from the harboured bacteria. Now, they snakes are in rubs and i KNOW thet they are as clean as possible.

all of my snakes have greatly improved eating habbits and are moved into bigger rubs when they grow . i wouldnt go back to vivs if you paid me. my animals are happier and they get checked alot more frequently than when they were in vivs. i miss that i cant see them, so i do spot check every morning and night. Rubs all the way for me!