Thoughts on no bite/feeding posts?

Bites and feeding... Its all in the presentation. If the material is presented in a educational and scientific manner such as a documentary of the animal in its natural setting I would say it is fine. When the material is presented for entertainment purposes only it reeks of the old school Roman arena where they slaughtered animals purely for the entertainment of the audience. Animals are slaughtered for our own consumption every day however only a warped individual would make videos of it so that other warped individuals can be entertained by the carnage. On another note, take it from someone in the tech industry, Facebook and products like it are not your friend. The information is used for purposes that you may have not even considered. Keep your life as private as possible.

If anyone says they don't like your feeding pics show them this and ask them if it's cute. Ask them why it's immoral to feed a sake that kills to eat but not immoral to keep cats, many of which kill for fun. Force them to admit that the reason they don't like snakes is because they don't have fur and not because they kill rodents.

Kudos to you Marissa for all your hard work and commitment to the hobby/ industry! Thank you for disseminating all that info in your op. I agree whole heartedly with everything you put forth. I just want to add that we as keepers need to be more vigilant in securing our reptiles (especially giant owners) and preventing these escapes. We all know that snakes are escape artist however big or small, and we need to focus on securing our charges to prevent this. Escapes of reptiles is a major problem in our hobby that needs more transparency and commitment of owners to stop this. A very real problem that causes major concerns and really hurts us every time it occurs and is even more detrimental when it goes public by the media. :rage:

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Originally Posted by Willowy

I'm not sure that simply not discussing such issues or not posting pics is going to help matters. Then some people are just going to say "look, they must be doing something bad because they're hiding their actions!". People who aren't doing anything wrong don't need to hide anything. Of course, discretion is needed. . .some people don't want to look at that kind of stuff. But hiding it just sort of rubs me the wrong way. I think open discussion is best, along with discussion of how you do it humanely and correctly. If it's not humane, well, maybe you shouldn't be doing it :p.

Now, idiots are gonna idiot. Pit bull owners have been fighting that one for years. No matter what the good owners do or say, the bad ones are going to keep making it worse for everyone. But the good owners should roundly condemn those bad owners, not ignore or condone their actions because of some twisted sense of solidarity.

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Yeah, I agree with this. The way my f/t rats die is in many ways more humane than the way the pig that provided my morning bacon died. That being said... what's with the people who kill their mice and rats by slitting their damn throats? Buy a freakin' gas machine. I just picked up like four or five months worth of rodents from a guy at a show yesterday and didn't think to look, and yep... he slit their damn throats. So now I am going to have bloody water and blood all over the cages. Damn it... talk about stuff that just makes us look like barbarians??

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Originally Posted by Rob

I'm torn on this. Personally I don't put things up about my snakes on fb. Especially feeding, but I will on here and IG as there's an audience that enjoys reptiles. I think a feeding snake is one of the most interesting and impressive things in the world.

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I don't typically put feeding pics on Facebook or public venues either, unless someone asks to see one. I have had that happen from non-snake people who are curious as to how it works. I also don't think I should have to hide how my snake eats, though. My dog eats a chicken based dog food. Why is that okay, given the amount of suffering that chickens raised commercially endure? They are going after us because the poultry lobby and the poultry-eating American public is more powerful than the reptile lobby... always the low hanging fruit. If the animal-use lobbies in the US were smarter, they would all band together to soundly destroy HSUS, PETA and their kin in the courts. They aren't friends to ANYONE at all that has animals in their life, no matter which way.

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Originally Posted by Albert Clark

Kudos to you Marissa for all your hard work and commitment to the hobby/ industry! Thank you for disseminating all that info in your op. I agree whole heartedly with everything you put forth. I just want to add that we as keepers need to be more vigilant in securing our reptiles (especially giant owners) and preventing these escapes. We all know that snakes are escape artist however big or small, and we need to focus on securing our charges to prevent this. Escapes of reptiles is a major problem in our hobby that needs more transparency and commitment of owners to stop this. A very real problem that causes major concerns and really hurts us every time it occurs and is even more detrimental when it goes public by the media. :rage:

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This I definitely agree with.

Know what else needs to stop?? Pictures of MORONS with venomous snakes who FREE HANDLE the damn things. If there is one aspect of the hobby that I actually think NEEDS to be better regulated by the government, it's the venomous side of things. I just don't think anyone with $100 should be able to walk into the Hamburg expo and buy a freakin cobra or a gaboon viper. There's way too many stupid people out there who are adrenaline junkies, and they really, really make our hobby look bad.

Re: retics in particular... the numbers they are bred in are in my opinion unsustainable in captivity. These are massively huge animals and most people who keep other smaller snakes are neither prepared nor capable of handling the needs of these truly giant snakes. If we look at the percentage of reptile owning homes that have the time, space and money to keep a single retic, let alone many, it's very small in comparison. So why are we breeding thousands of these a year? I have the same issue with people importing pacus and arowanas by the hundreds in the aquarium trade. How many people really have the space and money to properly house a 3-5' fish?? It's ridiculous... and it really DOES give HSUS and their kin a foothold in the argument.

I happen to live in a town in Canada that restricts us. I think the restrictions re a bit excessive, but I choose to for some reason abide by them. Mainly because I have children and a piece of trash for an ex wife...I don't want to give her any ammo to further ruin the lives of our children.

We have to register dogs annually and pay the city a fee...our politicians are morons that have a town of 500k greater than 100 million dollars in debt and continue to stupidly spend money on useles BS...but this is life.

We can't keep anything with venom, period.

Snakes are restricted to non venom and less than 3 meters in length as an adult

Reptiles are restricted to non venom and less than 2 meters in length as an adult.

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I don't need a snake that is in excess of those numbers, even being a retired fighter 6'2 and 230 pounds of the good stuff...I have no desire to handle a snake larger than a Ball Python. I have nothing to prove to anyone.

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Originally Posted by Hammertime1977

Snakes are restricted to non venom and less than 3 meters in length as an adult

Reptiles are restricted to non venom and less than 2 meters in length as an adult.

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I hesitate to ask this... but does your town know that snakes ARE reptiles?? lol

Safe to assume they don't considering they've buried us in so much debt.

Hamilton, Ontario

Once strong steel town, recovering...but not really a great place to live in places.

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Our city council is full of rejects that otherwise couldn't hold down a normal job. They're so underpaid that nobody with any talent would even consider running. I know I was asked to run about 10 years ago and I just laughed and said I couldn't afford the pay cut :p

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I think there's a fine line between over regulation and protecting those too stupid to protect themselves :p Personally I would prefer if we just hit the fast forward button and went back to survival of the fittest :)

I like the idea of just removing all the warning signs and letting the stupidity problem fix its self.

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Originally Posted by Hypancistrus

Re: retics in particular... the numbers they are bred in are in my opinion unsustainable in captivity. These are massively huge animals and most people who keep other smaller snakes are neither prepared nor capable of handling the needs of these truly giant snakes. If we look at the percentage of reptile owning homes that have the time, space and money to keep a single retic, let alone many, it's very small in comparison. So why are we breeding thousands of these a year? I have the same issue with people importing pacus and arowanas by the hundreds in the aquarium trade. How many people really have the space and money to properly house a 3-5' fish?? It's ridiculous... and it really DOES give HSUS and their kin a foothold in the argument.

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And this is where I think SD ares going to allow many to own retics that otherwise could not.

And I'd love to see the various animal hobbies stand up to fight PETA and HSUS. Over the past year or so HSUS has been pretty outed to most. I continue to share both groups messed up ethics and action on FB whenever I see a post pop up and continue to talk to people about them. Most people don't realize they don't own any shelters, use 99% of their money to lobby against owning animals, and the vast amount of animals PETA actually kills, etc.

New post on this from Kevin: (again cleaned up for the forum)

"Changes to the Nation: Ok, here it is, this is MY FAULT! I am a Retic Keeper and part of the Retic Nation, my love for these animals is like YOURS and then some! I am friends with the Admins of the Nation ( I am not an Admin here) and we talk about things off to the side. I am also the guy that FIGHTS for our rights and does things behind the scenes. It has been troubling me for a time some of the "foolish" post and things that make me cringe when I see them. I am seeing these post as an advocate for our Industry and large snake keepers. This is not me being offended or thinking what is right or wrong. This is me thinking HOLY ****, this makes us look like monsters, sadist and keepers of dangerous creatures.We can not possibly rely on USARK and others to help in our fight if we don't police ourselves and project a better image. I am reacting to snap shots representing all of us.... We all should know that there is a huge effort to ban or legislate the **** out of our hobby. Look, I'm swearing so people realize I am not some politically correct "do gooder", we are in a tough place and I HATE THE **** OUT OF our situation! We can not defend or counter for our industry if we are staring these idiotic post in the face and pretending that this stuff is not common. If we are going to argue the "good" in what we do and we should be "allowed" to keep and breed these animals we do not need to feed them the ammo in their guns. TO an outsider much of what we do looks INSANE, DANGEROUS and barbaric. It just takes a few bunny lovers, rat lovers , anti pet, animal right's types to accelerate the machine against us. WHy the heck would we want to create a hub for let's say Reticulated Pythons and show off our animals and then show activities that make us look less than wonderful? DO a search online, look to where the giant snake keepers collect and search the post for negative post/pics/videos. Take that information and show it to your state, legislators, animal control, animal welfare and watch them freak out! I asked and argued for The Retic Nation to clean things up, I told them what I thought was damaging and asked why there was a reason to post such things, what actual good did it do? It's about weighing the good and the bad, a post may be exciting or draw attention but it can also be forever on the Web. The admins did not all jump on board, there was a great deal of back and forth but in the end I think we collectively decided it was time to clean up our public act and maybe try to set a good example. In the meantime the amount of *****ing, crying and freaking out has been out of control at times. I will defend this to the bitter end, there is no reason to public display all aspects of our keeping. You don't go into a McDonalds and see pictures of them slaughtering you lunch do you? Thoughts?"

I think this is solid stuff to follow no matter what species we keep. Just because you don't own retics doesn't mean this isn't applicable. Corn snake, ball python, boas, whatever should keep this in mind. The battle for our snakes won't stop at just large constrictors (even though that's the easiest target)

And the starting of having to put snakes on a million dollar home owners insurance policy is definitely scary. Yet another way they're trying to close the doors on this hobby.