Improving Public Perception of Keeping Snakes

[Coluber42]

I wasn't ever in the habit of taking/posting lots of photos of my old corn snake or BP, basically because when I got them taking pictures meant finding the camera, putting film in it, getting the film developed, etc; and showing them to people meant convincing someone to come over and look at your photo album.

But when my corn snake died this winter at the age of 18, I posted about it on Facebook and got nothing but sympathy. Maybe I won over some snake skeptics, by posting about him the way everyone posts about a beloved pet who dies; and because I'd bought a baby snake as a teenager but then amazingly enough, it lived for 18 years without getting big enough to swallow someone's dog. (plus I'm a classical musician and have no tattoos! )

I've posted about my new baby BP a few times since too, and hope that I've won over a few that way, too. Partly because a baby BP is just cuter than cute... but also because if someone says "OMG python, just wait until it gets huge!" I can explain that BP's don't actually get that big, and even a large adult basically can't do much real damage to a human - a rabbit or even a rat can inflict a worse bite, not to mention a cat or dog.

That said, I do wish it were harder to buy the larger species such as burms and retics. Those are animals that really do get big enough to hurt someone, and are fairly demanding to keep as adults just on account of their size. And every idiot who does something heinous with a retic makes it harder to convince skeptics that ball pythons are actually safe and harmless. I have no problem with regulating animals that really are dangerous and/or highly demanding to care for.

But part of the public education picture is teaching people that there are many kinds of snakes, constrictors, pythons, boas, etc, just like there are many species of cats and many species of primates. A Kenyan sand boa isn't going to grow up into a 20-foot retic any more than a house cat is going to grow up to be a tiger. When people realize that snakes are just animals like every other animal, they're maybe more inclined to be tolerant.

I remember around the time I got my first BP when I was 13 or 14, my stepmother said something like, "Well OK, but I still don't quite understand why you want an invertebrate as a pet". My stepmother is a smart lady with a PhD (in the humanities, not science), from an educated family, etc; but it never occurred to her that snakes are even vertebrates. I think it's unfortunately common that people just don't know really basic things about snakes; but when they learn even just a little, it helps demystify them.