somewhat can see your point of view, but.....

[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ The Venomous Snake Forum ]

Posted by MsTT on May 11, 2003 at 22:28:21:

In Reply to: somewhat can see your point of view, but..... posted by oreganus on May 11, 2003 at 18:28:30:

:At this logic, you should be jumping on almost everyone on this forum, because I would definately bet that most have children and venomous. It is not the fact they are in the same house, it is more a issue of the proper conditions and security measures(IE: seperate secure room, secured locked cages,ect.).

Agreed. You can own dangerous things and also have children if your security measures are good, but keeping the dangerous things casually around the house with the children is not a good idea. I should have qualified the phrase "in the house with children" a bit better.

> As far as keeping animals humanely, I have yet to see a zoo that kept large elephants,girafs,whales, primates,ect in a humane condition. Can they live and be pain free,YES, but is merely stagnating away a life they deserve? NO.

I agree that there are many zoos that keep animals under questionable conditions. But I think if you got a look at the Disney Wild Kingdom setup you'd be fairly pleased. They host and participate in a lot of AAZK and AZA meetings and conferences, and the degree of care and the amount of room that they give the animals is really impressive. There is also a zoo that keeps its marine mammals in "free contact", allowing them to swim away into the open ocean any time they please, returning only because they like interacting with human trainers. I'd say that their setup is quite humane.

Anthropomorphizing animals is always tempting, but the fact is that animals lack the ability to be philosophically unhappy because they are "stagnating" in a zoo. They can be inadequately housed or bored and inadequately stimulated, though I'm not sure that one really applies to snakes.

A snake can be stressed and unhappy because it is improperly housed, but I'm not convinced that they have enough of a thinking brain to understand that they are in captivity and to be unhappy about it. I think that as long as they have just enough territory to patrol, a safe warm place to hide and plenty to eat, they're not mentally capable of being unhappy just because their cage isn't the wild. I would describe my long term captive snakes as calm and content.

Follow Ups:

very well put and agreed. N/p oreganus 05/11/03 (0)