Experience: Beginners and Experts

[daniel1983]

I was reading a discussion concerning experience level in another thread and decided to create an entirely seperate discussion since the other seemed to get off track.

What criteria do each of you use to gauge your experience level and the experience level of others?

Is a person that keeps one snake for 20 year equal to a person that keep 20 snakes for 1 year?

If you keep 50 snakes and never have to deal with any health issues, does the person that keeps 1 snake that had to treat an RI have more experience?

If your animal gets an RI, is treated and lives, would you have any less experience if it dies? more experience?

Does a person keeping 200 ball pythons that has never hatched an egg have more experience than a person with a single pair producing clutchs of eggs each year?

There are so many different criteria for judging who is an expert and who is a novice. There are also many things involving reptiles that some can have a great knowledge and experience of one topic, but lack experience in another topic that is equally important.

So how are we to judge who is giving out good information and who is giving out bad information? Is going with the majority always best or does the majority just recycle information presented from a select few?

[Freakie_frog]

I don't really think there is a standard gauge for this kind of thing. I mean with this hobby we are all ever learning. Now if you mean hands on experience or things that we have learned by others experiences. My experience with tapeworms exceeds Adams because I have had to deal with them but his experience breeding far exceeds my own. I think what a person needs to do is absorb all the different info out there and then choose for themselves which course to follow.

[slartibartfast]

I look at range and depth of knowledge, and ability to cope with unforseen problems and ailments. Years of experience matter, but so does the quality of that experience. There is no good way to readily gauge that online, but by following postings over time, one can get a pretty good idea.

I think a lot of the knowledge is trickled down from the bigger breeders...a keeper with one snake cannot possibly produce the same kind of data about optimal conditions as someone who keeps hundreds of that same species. Word of mouth..."I heard so and so say that he does it this way and gets really good results" filters down to the smaller and smaller guys, and ultimately the whole community benefits.

But judging that online, when you're new to the scene and don't know any of the players? It can be pretty challenging and I think like any social group that one enters, you just need to get to know folks. I hope this makes sense...I just got home from working my overnight shift, and I'm pretty dopey. :-P

[ladywhipple02]

I think I typically use time as my gauge of experience. Age provided wisdom and all that...

That said:

There are a ton of variables. I mean, let's say a person has two snakes, in a closed system for 20 years. They're probably not going to run into as many problems as a person that has 100 snakes for only two years---bringing snakes in and out of a collection could possibly expose said collection to more problems... inherited bugs, RI's, mites, worms, etc.

I feel that a person who has 100 snakes has to have a tighter reign of control over that collection. They need to take greater precautions that someone that has two or three snakes in a completely closed system. Someone who is bringing snakes in and shipping snakes out has to make sure that every snake coming in and every snake going out is healthy and happy. A person with a closed collection can get away with more slip-ups than someone with a larger collection... if one of the snakes were to get sick, the spread of the sickness can only go so far. In a larger collection... well... 100 sick snakes to take care of is going to teach you real quick.

I'm NOT saying that someone with a few snakes in a closed collection shouldn't take precautions or should cut corners... NO NO NO.

I AM saying that someone who has had a large collection of snakes for a longer period of time---5-10 years---with little or no incidence is someone I'm probably going to listen very carefully to.

[wilomn]

It's a lot like book knowledge and hands on knowledge.

You can read a book, or books, and know an awful lot about any given subject. You can speak of it intelligently, you can pass on information that others less read than yourself may not know, you can make yourself appear as an expert.

Until..... something comes up that is not covered in a book.

Someone who has years of experience with multiple animals and species, whether that person is well read or not, will just know things that a book only expert won't.

The way a snake holds itself, the way it looks at objects, be they food items or just it's surroundings, how loose or tight the skin, how it moves, why it may not be moving, all are discussed in many books but until you get your hands on MANY snakes exhibiting these factors, your expertise is very limited. That is not to say your knowledge has no value, just that it is of a different worth, which is not in and of itself, a bad thing.

Your real experts, from what I have seen, not only have a TON of hands on experience, but are well read and keep up on available information through word of mouth, books, internet, magazines, all forms of media.

There are a lot of people who know a lot of stuff but are far from being experts.

It's really hard to figure out who is and who isn't but as was mentioned in an earlier post, with time and attention, you can figure out who YOU think is an expert by keeping track of what and how people pass on information.

[lord jackel]

Personally I think the internet has created what I would call "group expertise". There is no reason to seek out a single expert anymore. Now you can post a thread and get several responses from all levels of experience (with a mixture of time based, hands on based, different views of how to, etc.)
It is like Wikipedia - everyone commenting and adding to come to the most collective "expert" answer.

From this the person requesting the knowledge can make a decision that fits their particular need or circumstance.

Hope this helps

[ctrlfreq]

This is a really tough question, especially since certain experiences may or may not even be relevant given the context of the discussion (for example, "how do I get duct tape off my snake" may have never come up for a large breeder with a clean-room environment).

All in all, I find it's easiest to judge experience based on how comfortable someone is with the topic at hand, and how reasonably or defensively they respond when their information is questioned. Usually, if someone is working with a shaky foundation, they will attempt to defend their comments instead of trying to explaining them.

[kc261]

I think the answer is "all of them". Or none of them. Or something like that.

The person who owns 20 snakes for one year, assuming they got all hatchlings, has ZERO experience with snakes older than 1 year old. But the person with 1 snake for 20 years has ZERO experience with snakes different from their snake in some way, whether it be male/female, easy feeder/picky feeder, whatever.

The person who has had 50 snakes, but they've always been healthy, has ZERO experience with RIs. But the person with one snake that got an RI, again, has ZERO experience with different snakes.

A really well read "book expert" will know things that they have never experienced, but if the knowledge still gives the right answer, does it matter if they have experienced it firsthand? Sometimes it will, sometimes it won't. Depends on how easily the question at hand can be learned from a book. Sometimes in their reading they'll have stumbled across things that someone with lots of hands-on experience might not know.

You don't even mention the person with 20 years of experience with BPs, 1000's of them, breeding them, and illnesses, and etc., but all BPs, versus someone with only 1 year of experience, but they've had 50 different species.

Fact is, different ones have more or less knowledge about different things. While it is pretty easy to determine who is a beginner, determining who the experts are is a lot harder, because there is no single measuring stick that is the only one that matters.

[jjspirko]

I think this is very hard to pin down.

Speaking for myself I consider myself to be very experienced both at the field and husbandry level. I have worked with three different zoos as a volenteer and was the "reptile specialist" for an animal shelter at one time. I started working with snakes heavily via a family friend at 10 and was handling hots by the age of 12. I currently have a very diverse collection of small to large snakes and have had to deal with enough typical problems to know how to deal with them. I have preformed removals for more then a decade now, etc.

Does any of that make me an expert? Nope not in the least!

I would also tell you 99% of my experience is with snakes, talk lizards and get past leppard geckos, iggys and anoles and you are beyound my knowledge.

There is also specialization to consider.

Such as would I put my corn snake knowledge to the test against Don Sonderberg, Kathy Love or Rich Z? Not in the least but I would bet I know more then the three combined about Lamprophis.

I hesitate to call anyone not fully engauged with snakes as full time employment an "expert". To me an expert is a very specialized individual.

I consider myself and many of the people on this forum "advanced" or "highly experienced" keepers but don't know how many experts I really know. The three people I mentioned with corns I would certainly call experts in that niche but are they experts on all snakes? I don't think they would tell you that.

Beginner seems much easier to pin down. I guess expert is a very subjective thing. Many of us would say we are not experts but I would guess many people that have less experience might consider us to be.

I think to much is made of "experience" with snakes over all. Most just are not that hard to keep happy. Also consider a person may be a great keeper and breeder but not really know much about their snakes scientificly. Just what temps to keep them at, what to feed them and what patterns to create for breeding. Another person might know Genus, Phylum and Species front to back but have no hands on experience. Another may have field herped for 25 years but never preformed captive care. To me each might be an expert in an area but not over all.

I think two things are misunderstood in forums online today

1. That simple time with animals makes one "experienced" or that having a lot of animals makes one an "expert", neither is the case.

2. That a person with a few thousand posts in forums must be some sort of expert. (this is by no means confined to herp forums it is common in like every niche).

In regard to these two issues, I think it is more about either specializing in some area during that time or in that quantity or being very broad in species and still pulling it all off with thriving animals as far as "experience" making you very capable in regard to husbandry.

As for being any kind of expert because of a bunch of forum posts. I just think that is silly. I do not see much of that thought train here though at BP.net which is great! There are some others though (some of you know what I am talking about) where anyone with a 500 or so posts is regarded as some type of snake yoda, .

Anyway to me in the amature world where most of us live I don't think many are truly experts, just a bunch of people that love animals and try to learn a bit more about them every day.

In short to me an expert is a "master" and mastering anything as complex as snakes and other reptiles seems quite unlikely,

[JASBALLS]

In short to me an expert is a "master"

Thanks!