Reptiles! What is the fascination?

[Faith]

Its more of the question "why do we keep them" well becasue we want to if we didnt then we wouldnt have them in the first place.
But the reason i personally keep them is because of my OH he gave me the gecko bug and now i could sit for ages and just look at them, observe their behaviours and their indivdual personalities.
The kids find them easy to look after and will even catch crickets for the leos to eat they feed them water them and help clean them out (as they do with our snakes) just like the kids next door do with their hamsters or what ever it is they keep lol.
This teaches them respect for the animals and the helplessness of them it also educates our children on care handling and responsibility.
They enjoy educating the other children in their class and other adults lol.
Not only for these reasons but also ill support people who keep reptiles that are endangered in their natural enviorment we have already seen near extintion of many wild animals and by us keeping all sorts of wonderful exotics we are making sure that our childrens children will be able to see them too.
There is a simple answer to your question Rory
Because we are reptile lovers lol some people dont like rodents, so they dont keep them so are scared of cats etc
They are the perfect pet for anyone with allergies no hair no fleas etc etc they dont mind if you dont want to poke them walk them or even train them.
As said above
The perfect pet for our ever growing life styles

[royalpython]

Faith has made several really good points! I'm allergic to dogs and cats, and i used to love interacting with them. The other point she has made, is with me soon becoming a father, i am really looking forward to educate one of our own and allow our child the chance to interact with them.

i forgot about the other point made by art gecko. Without captive collections many of us wouldn't get to see any reptiles at all.

[Faith]

There are so many reasons tbh and there is no way i can think of any more apart from saying that if some one was to see the film of our 5 yr old catching baby crickets for her new leo to eat and not say ahhhh then they are crazy lol or see her with their royal python or the chams
I can honestly say that our kids have more time for the reptiles than they do for our staff and she has been with us nearly 3 yrs lol
The way i see it our climate is changing rapidly and if we can give our kids the heads up on what to expect when our weather is like it is in oz then thats great they will pass that on to their kids. We are already getting more and more sightings of tropical spiders and inverts i wonder how long its going to be until a boa creeps over in a bunch of bananans lol

[miffikins]

I had a fascination with dinosaurs as a kid, and altho reptiles are not the same the fact that you are able to interact with something so far removed from ourselves I find really intriguing.
I don't really have much of a 'thing' for snakes, I'd prefer something like a ratsnake that is active and I can observe than a boid. But then again, I would choose a lizard over them anyday. The two reptiles I interact with the most are a monitor and a blue tongue skink, which are both, as lizards go, intelligent. They are both very inquisitive about everything and I spend hours rearranging their vivs and getting them new things to explore and investigate.
I'm also a firm believer in education. A lot of reptiles are coming more under threat, not least from the WC trade, and getting kids interested makes more people who want to help conserve them. My neice and nephew always come over and help with my lot and my neice who just turned 7 will sit for literally hours watching the swift climb around, so I'm glad to pass my interest on to them.

I also love the way that even though common belief would say they don't really have a personality as such, you find that even in a few animals of the same species, there is such variation in their mannerisms and behaviour. There is a hell of a lot more to them than people believe and thats the most interesting thing for me