Petsmart?

[Daigga]

Does making a reptile setup larger and more elaborate make it easier or more difficult for a hobbyist to care for it properly and efficiently? Now, transfer that thought to the retail store environment where time is your biggest expense. In order to make a larger display, you would also have to remove space from another area - would the lost sales there be made up for as well? In a cost/benefit analysis, would this be a productive use of funds for a company?

I'm just throwing out some ideas, and the thing that struck me first was seeing two or three ball pythons in an enclosure I wouldn't keep a single snake in. As I'm sure everyone here knows, husbandry errors sometimes require wallet-clenching responses. My two cents is also that reptiles, which eliminate with less frequency than birds or small mammals, are easier to clean and care for and a larger habitat doesn't make much difference in the time it takes to care for them. A glass tank with substrate is a glass tank with substrate no matter how you look at it.

[Eric Alan]

I'm just throwing out some ideas, and the thing that struck me first was seeing two or three ball pythons in an enclosure I wouldn't keep a single snake in. As I'm sure everyone here knows, husbandry errors sometimes require wallet-clenching responses. My two cents is also that reptiles, which eliminate with less frequency than birds or small mammals, are easier to clean and care for and a larger habitat doesn't make much difference in the time it takes to care for them. A glass tank with substrate is a glass tank with substrate no matter how you look at it.

I completely hear what you're going for. Personally, I would love to see these kinds of displays more often. The reality, though, is that the current set-ups in the store aren't meant to serve as long-term homes for the animals in them, which is what a larger display would imply. I don't think anyone working there would recommend keeping the animals at home in set-ups exactly like the ones you see in the store (size, etc). Their purpose is to serve as temporary housing and put the animals inside of them on full display, which they do quite well of when the people taking care of them do their part.