Future of keeping pet reptiles and amphibians: towards integrating animal welfare, human health and environmental sustainability

Pasmans, Frank; Bogaerts, Sergé; Braeckman, Johan; Cunningham, Andrew A.; Hellebuyck, Tom; Griffiths, Richard A.; Sparreboom, Max; Schmidt, Benedikt R.; Martel, An

doi:10.1136/vr.104296

Cited by 64 publications

(64 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…Points well taken, and I would add that reptiles and amphibians may have more social lives than we have generally appreciated 9 and this should be emphasised in educational materials and perhaps housing options (which the authors mention). Pasmans and others 8 do make clear that, in context, these problems are not worse than with other pet animals. Of course, this does not excuse mistreatment nor the need for education and enforcement of sensible animal welfare regulations across all animals (perhaps even including invertebrates).…”

Section: Exploring the Controversiesmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…This is true for me 6 and many other, now prominent, students of herptiles, as shown in an autobiographical compendium of three dozen herpetologists. 8 Nevertheless, there have been calls to restrict the public from keeping reptiles and amphibians in captivity due to the claim that diseases, such as salmonellosis, pose great dangers to children and the immunocompromised, that poor care and ignorance of their needs is all too common, collecting and trade practices are often troubling, and conservation issues are prevalent (although not so much in the regular pet store trade as compared to trophy hunting private collectors), and so forth. All these concerns need addressing.…”

Section: Vets and Exotic Petsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Keeping reptiles and amphibians as pets: challenges and rewards

Burghardt

2017

Veterinary Record

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REPTILES and amphibians are, for many of us, the most fascinating animals on earth, with morphological, physiological, reproductive, behavioural and life style diversity far beyond anything found in mammals and birds, the typical focus of veterinary research and practice. When I started my career in reptile behaviour there was comparatively little interest in reptiles and amphibians in ethology, comparative psychology or veterinary medicine. This has changed dramatically in the last few decades due to several factors.

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Section: Exploring the Controversiesmentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Vets and Exotic Petsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Keeping reptiles and amphibians as pets: challenges and rewards

Burghardt

2017

Veterinary Record

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“…Trade drives the collection of wild amphibians, directly leading to decline of some species (Natusch and Lyons, 2012;Alroy, 2015), and this is the justification for trade bans and/or restrictions (e.g., CITES). Trade is often injurious to the animals traded, either during transport (Ashley et al, 2014) or as a result of malnutrition and poor husbandry (Pasmans et al, 2017;Warwick et al, 2018). Trade carries disease (Fisher and Garner, 2007;Peel et al, 2012;Kolby et al, 2014;O'Hanlon et al, 2018) and specimens in trade act as reservoirs for disease (Spitzen-van der Sluijs et al, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Have a Pet Amphibian? Insights From YouTube

et al. 2019

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The desire to own a pet amphibian is growing, and with it a growth in amphibian trade and in negative impacts on native populations, including disease transmission and invasive amphibian populations. We know very little about how or why people choose amphibians as pets, but amphibian owners share large numbers of videos on freely accessible platforms, such as YouTube. We aimed to use videos of captive amphibians to determine which species are kept, their life-history stage and the types of videos uploaded. We watched and categorized 1,162 videos by video type, type of amphibian behavior and amphibian taxonomy (superfamily, family, and species). We used data on the amphibian trade from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), on conservation status from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list, and on potential environmental impact from published Environmental Impact Classification of Alien Taxa (EICAT) records, to determine potential conflicts of owning pet amphibians. We recorded 173 captive species in 847 videos with a taxonomic overrepresentation of salamandroids and pipoids, and an underrepresentation of ranoids and plethodontoids. When compared to videos of wild amphibian species, videos of captive animals featured disproportionate amounts of adults feeding, being handled and moving. The videos watched had a smaller proportion of threatened amphibian species, but a higher proportion of invasive species, than would be expected by chance, with the proportion present in CITES appendices (18%) being non-significant. We suggest that such data can be used to profile potential pets for trade and attempt to avoid conflicts with threatened and highly impacting alien species.

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“…The amphibian pet-trade has recently received attention from studies aiming to, characterise trade regionally [6,7] and internationally [8,9,10], and to inform risk assessments [11]. However, the amphibian pet-trade still remains poorly understood.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The amphibian pet-trade has emerged as a subject of conservation importance from the viewpoint of invasions, overexploitation, and diseases [10]. Yet, systematic assessments of the pet-trade seldom test its predictors (but see [18]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Taxonomic Bias and Traits of the Global Amphibian Pet-Trade

Mohanty

Measey

2019

Preprint

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The pet-trade is recognized as the major pathway for amphibian introductions worldwide, yet our understanding of the trade is limited. In this study, we systematically assess amphibian species in the pet-trade, i) characterising taxonomic bias and ii) evaluating species-traits as predictors of traded species and trade volume. We collated a global list of 443 traded amphibians and a regional dataset on trade volume. Species-traits (body size, native range size, clutch size, and breeding type) and conservation status, were considered as predictors of traded species and volume. We found a strong bias for certain Families, along with a preference for large-bodied and widely distributed species with a larval phase, in the pet-trade. However, species-traits performed poorly in predicting trade volume of pet amphibians in the USA. The identified species-traits and taxonomic bias of the trade is used to predict species likely to be traded as pets in the future.

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Future of keeping pet reptiles and amphibians: towards integrating animal welfare, human health and environmental sustainability

Cited by 64 publications

References 72 publications

Keeping reptiles and amphibians as pets: challenges and rewards

Keeping reptiles and amphibians as pets: challenges and rewards

Why Have a Pet Amphibian? Insights From YouTube

Taxonomic Bias and Traits of the Global Amphibian Pet-Trade

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