Pity pickups?

[Marrissa]

the solution is straightforward and easy: Dont buy anything that lives from any shop that doesnt have excellent husbandry for every species they have.

Its a lesson i learned when i had an aquarium. There, you just cannot go directly to a breeder or order online, because living tropical fish are harder to transport than reptiles, and only worth a fraction. So the way to do it is: You look at different aquarium shops, and check their whole display for quality of husbandry. one single fish that is sick or dead anywhere in the collection can make the difference. if you regularly check all the displays in several stores, you get a feeling of who has the husbandry right, and then ONLY buy from these.


for reptiles, just do the same. If husbandry isnt excellent for ALL reptiles, amphibians and spiders, dont buy anything. When you spot a sick turtle or some dead gecko or empty water bowls or a lack of UV light for those species that need it, just dont buy anything. Its the best you can do, shaming a shop that has bad husbandry online and in reviews is also a good idea.

Where i live they also have an excellent reptile sanctuary. The only route to taking in rescues that i consider would be via the reptile sanctuary. They get reptiles in really bad shape all the time, but the reptile sanctuary is led by a university professor veterinarian specialized on reptiles and has 3 or 4 volunteer vets. They only give away animals that have recovered and that are free of infections and parasites, and they only give to people that prove with photo documentation that they have their enclosure and setup right. Taking an animal from this sanctuary also requires an adequate donation to the sanctuary, for that you get life-long support and options to return the animal to the sanctuary.

Thats how rescues make sense. Buying animals from bad guys does not help and cannot help, it only makes things worse.

Apart from that, there often are cases of private people rescuing animals from private people, here you can do a lot of good. Like, for example, a reptile keeper gets a chronic disease that will require long stays in hospitals and therefore must get rid of his collection. This would be a case where help really makes sense. Or when someone with a giant snake is forced to move to a different state, but the snake cannot be moved across state lines.

But when private people charge money for animals in bad shape and make you pay to rescue them, thats again something that cannot be supported.

just my 2 cents, if you want to rescue animals AND support the hobby as a whole, you got to be smart and not let emotions take over. Otherways you give people that dont care about the animals and only care about money a way to walk over you and to trick you into financially supporting them, when you shouldnt.

This summarizes my opinion on it pretty well. The start of this thread wasn't about if or how well ball pythons can bounce back from poor treatment, but about paying money for animals that are not being properly cared for in order to help them, "the pity purchase". I used to be on a betta forum and when I heard their opinion of don't buy those sad about to die bettas, because you'll be paying more money than they're worth and helping the company to restock them, I no longer purchased any from stores like that.