Having been lucky enough to work in livestock retail, research dozens of species, provide care for them, help people make the right decisions for their pets, and give husbandry advice across hundreds of species available in the trade today, I feel I have earned the right to shout viciously at the elephant in the room.
Herpetoculture can be fucking toxic.
Everything from buying the animal to going online into various support groups can be a swirling pool of hate, gatekeeping and in some terrible cases, pressure.
I started work at Shirley Aquatics in January of 2018, it was my first job in retail and, I’m sad to say, my first job working with the animals I have long been fascinated by.
With 20 years of reptile, amphibian and invertebrate keeping behind me, still learning and, more importantly, happy to learn more I was ready to go.
Was I in for a surprise.
I was initially employed as a member of the tropical room team, specialising in marine fish and invertebrates. I was also required to cover time in the reptile section. I was happy enough cleaning systems, feeding fish and working the coral bays and invertebrate collection.
Reptiles was a very different story; the section was very clunky in comparison to the tropical room. Handwritten records. A “reptile diary” where the day’s jobs were recorded with any other pertinent information, sales, deaths, animal escapes, etc.
Floating between two sections in retail is akin to existing between two worlds. One where everything is numbers and comparative calm and another that is chaos and a distinct lack of structure.
The problems on one section were not the same as the problems on another. Sales from one did not necessarily complement the other, priorities differed and so did the way each section operated. Then there were the problems that exist in almost every workplace: management preferences, personalities, differing levels of experience and, occasionally, people simply not pulling their weight. All of it affected how the sections and, indeed, the whole business operated.
The trade
Across the herpetoculture world, for many, their journey begins in a shop. Surrounded by exotic, scaly, prehistoric-looking animals. Awed by the sheer scale of some of them, astounded by the cute appearance of a hatchling, perhaps even a shiver induced by the large and leggy tarantula.
For some people, it’s a knee-jerk reaction – “I’ll buy that one!”
For others, it’s a careful decision that has potentially been mulled over for months.
For some retail staff, it’s like blood in the water – SELL.
Instead of a careful discussion to ascertain the ability of the person who may want to buy something, they push expensive animals, specialist species, overpriced morphs with ridiculous setups and enclosures. Their job is to sell and, by God, they will sell!
Not always the best thing for the animal or the person buying it.
I’ve touched on this before in other articles. And I’ve highlighted it in the same manner. The responsible retailer has to be able to say no and turn the customer towards an appropriate species or, worst case scenario, refuse the sale completely.
This got me in trouble with management more than once and, had my retail career continued, would have got me in trouble again.
In my little head, I was finding these amazing creatures a new home where they would be cared for appropriately and live a long and complete life.
I was not handing them over to become a novelty for the kids, only to be completely ignored after the first week.
I was protecting the animals from poor care by refusing the sale. That was my rationale and that is a hill I will die on.
Unfortunately, I did use this knowledge as a weapon on occasion. Normally, after my patience had worn thin, I would snap and refuse a sale just because. Not my proudest moment.
This particular hill has caused much name calling over the years – arrogance, cockiness, power tripping, “just a pet shop assistant”. And I say this to those people if any should be reading this.
It was never about me. It was never about you. It was never about the money. It was about the animals and if you still don’t understand that?
YOU are the problem.
Online battles
This brought a whole new dimension and depth to herpetoculture.
You could post a simple question online over a cup of coffee in the morning.
Have 14 different answers and a further 20 follow-up questions by lunch.
Be in a blood feud with a chap called Andre and his single kingsnake by dinner, who invariably gets you kicked from the community and banned from any others that Andre happens to be a member of. Dick.
Fun. I never said it was a positive dimension and depth.
This isn't the norm and it's thankfully not that common, but it is a part of the community online. There are those, I like to think similar to myself, who want to learn and want to share their experiences with other like-minded keepers. There are others who gatekeep every single piece of information like a dragon guarding a hoard of gold. And yet more who use the phrase — “it was fine 20 years ago, it's fine now”.
There are others that don't even deserve mention. Rage baiters. Animal flippers and “dealers” or the magical unethical breeder. That's all I'll say about those particular individuals before this turns into an angry rant.
I've banged heads with pretty much all of these delightful people at one time or another and it never ends well. Blinding rage, frustration and, on more than one occasion, being hit with threats of death. If correct husbandry or responsibility of care is mentioned, if you dare point out the holes in their care or methods, game over.
But it's not all doom and gloom! There are wonderful groups and communities that accept people of any experience level, don't permit sales or advertisements and focus solely on the continued care and husbandry of whatever species is in question. These are the groups that push the boundaries of what we can do in captivity for these animals.
What this all means
Expertise isn't the problem.
Disagreement isn't the problem.
Even being wrong isn't necessarily the problem.
The problem is what happens when knowledge becomes status—when changing your mind means losing face, when being corrected becomes an attack, or when “I've kept them for 20 years” becomes authority rather than experience to be examined.
If someone can say – “I've kept these snakes for 30 years in tubs and they're fine”
But they cannot accept that there's even a tiny chance that the animals in question may be better off with behavioural affordances, opportunities to dig, climb, explore, swim and stretch themselves out, what does that make them? As keepers? What do they learn? What do we learn from that?
Thirty years of experience should give you thirty years of observations to draw from. It shouldn't give you thirty years of immunity from being questioned.
I have been keeping reptiles for more than 30 years. I know more now than I did 20 years ago. I know more than I did ten years ago. Fuck, I know more than I did last year. With that comes more questions about behaviour and temperature and everything else. And there are things I believed for years that I would now happily challenge.
That doesn't invalidate my experience. That's what experience is supposed to do.
If new information threatens your status rather than interests you, the problem isn't the information.
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