Ball Pythons... deadly? According to animal planet...

I'm watching Animal Planet and they did a "bust" on someone’s place that had reptiles (I guess they aren't allowed in San Francisco) and they made it sound horrible. Usually animal planet does a good job but... the guy has mostly BPs (include a pretty pretty piebald), I might have seen a Burmese, rainbow boa, jcp, red tail and a couple I don't recognize (boas and pythons though, and no reticulateds) and there are only 26 - and the officer is saying that it is a dangerous collection that could kill or seriously injure a large grown man. AND that having that many means that the man has an unnatural obsession with snakes.

He had them all in a nice rack set up - he was breeding mice to feed them and every single one was able to be handled without so much as a tag or hiss and the show is making sound like it was this horrible underground black market trading ring. They say that with this many snakes he must be into *gasp* trading.

This isn't the first time either - they picked up a Burmese on another episode (animal cops) and the guy said he had picked one up that was like 20' before and it ate a 60 lbs pig (which the narrator then pointed out was the size of a 7 year old child).


They do such a good job of challenging myths about pitbulls, I wish they would do the same about snakes.

I hate when something gets misrepresented just for ratings.

There is no educating the folks at Animal Planet. It's all about shock factor and ratings. Let this be a lesson to us all. Don't let your neighbors know about your collection or you may be next.

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Originally Posted by Jenn

There is no educating the folks at Animal Planet. It's all about shock factor and ratings. Let this be a lesson to us all. Don't let your neighbors know about your collection or you may be next.

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This guy got caught when they got a call from UPS that a package they were delivering was moving - it was two BPs.

I was just watching that episode a few minutes ago. It was ridiculous what they were saying about those snakes. he had some gorgeous rainbows and womas, and I just dont see how he had a "deadly" collection. the cop was freaking out about this guy's obsession too, like you said. I just dont see the problem here.

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Originally Posted by Salem Purrs

I was just watching that episode a few minutes ago. It was ridiculous what they were saying about those snakes. he had some gorgeous rainbows and womas, and I just dont see how he had a "deadly" collection. the cop was freaking out about this guy's obsession too, like you said. I just dont see the problem here.

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Yea - I'm just watching it. For the sake of the folks on here I hope that having 26 snakes don't qualify someone as crazy... :rolleye2:

And what kills me is that it wasn't even a bad situation like reptiles are sometimes rescued from- from what I could see they were all in really good shape and were getting taken care of very well.

is that the animal cops show? i hate that show - so depressing. people can do such horrible things to their animals.

I agree that it sucks that they are playing up the "dangerous" aspect of snakes. I don't understand why a channel named animal planet would be nurturing an unnatural fear of snakes by making people with snake collections look like creeps. Reaching out to a new audience???

lame.

They had an episode a while back where I believe a medium burm, maybe 8-10 ft bit and constricted a really ignorant woman who was helping her sister and wasn't shown what to do. The woman had a rabbit in a bag, and tried to drop it in the cage, but it got stuck and she reached into the cage to pull it out, and the snake struck, and constricted her arm. Obviously her arm was much warmer than the dead rabbit, and the snake got confused. The animal police came out and wrestled it off her, and then they did a little narration on why the woman was at fault, and ultimately her sister was responsible. Aparently the sister moved, and couldnt take it, so it was left with a total novice, she wasn't instructed how to properly care for the animal, and got bit, it could have been worse, it only constricted her arm. I think it might have been Animal Cops Houston, I find that they seem much more knowledgeable, but their animal behavior specialist seems to always want to put the dogs down, we joke in my house, "those puppies are too cute, gotta put em down." Animal cops NY seems to rehab a large percent, Houston puts down all dogs with a hint of aggression, even if they were starved for months and show food aggression, this can be dealt with as they put on weight.

anyone know for sure what show it was? i am trying to find it.

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Originally Posted by scutechute

is that the animal cops show? i hate that show - so depressing. people can do such horrible things to their animals.

I agree that it sucks that they are playing up the "dangerous" aspect of snakes. I don't understand why a channel named animal planet would be nurturing an unnatural fear of snakes by making people with snake collections look like creeps. Reaching out to a new audience???

lame.

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I don't think it's the channel, I think the animal cops in that city are just stupid. E Vet interns is always favorable to reptiles, and I have seen successful snake rescues in animal planet NY. Plus the Crocodile Hunter was great herp advocate. Remember that being an animal cop is probably not very lucrative, and these people tend to be more fur pet oriented. I think more money can probably be earned breeding herps than being an animal cop, so they don't really get the experienced reptile people (who wants to work with a bunch of people who think breeding snakes makes you crazy?)