Consider the comodo dragons at London zoo. As the curator explained, they are big lizards and they can be dangerous, so we invested resources into taming them, I canīt remember his name but the reptile curator at that time explained how they tamed their Comodo dragons to the point where they behaved more like dogs than normal comodo dragons really.. Eager to engage in positive communication with the zoo keeprs. This is clearly not normal behaviour for a wild comodo dragon.
domestication is the process of taming. If your turtle is tamed, it is domesticated to some degree. Leopard geckoes are domesticated into a hundred different varieties and their behaviour is different from wild ranging leopard geckoes in Afghanistan. Also their size may be different.
A couple of years ago I worked as a kindergarten and there we kept a terrarium in which I would argue that we domesticated hissing roaches to some degree.
Together with the kids we set up a 30x30x30cm vivarium with some plants & substrate.
We ordered giant wild madagascar hissing roaches and true to the ad, the critters were big, and unaccustomed to people and especially children. They were hissing a lot in the beginning and acted realy frightened, so we put them in the vivarium and stopped handling them for a while.
Given a little time the plants in the viv grew and the roaches tamed down to the point where they would come out in broad daylight to eat bananas in front of many 3,4 & 5 year old kids who are trying to stay still and be quiet. When responsible 5 year olds handled the roaches, they wouldnīt hiss. A few times some kids would squeeze a roach to provoke it to hiss in front of their parents, who would react in compassion to the poor thing and urge the kids not to hurt it. or put it back in the terrarium.
I would argue that domestication unavoidably happens to all vertebrate species who live in vivariums in peoples homes. Maybe I make a weak point, can you strengthen it?
From this point one could argue that domesticated animals really belong at home in the natural environment provided by their owner, even if they should be reptiles, and even if they have a lot of wild element in them.
Unless invasive or dangerous, it is in the domesticated animals best interest to be offered room for existence also in the US.
The line between domesticated and wild is very subjective. In this post Iīm advocating my understanding of the term. If you have adapted an AR inspired definition then of course my understanding of "domesticated" would seem twisted and extreme to you.
To me it sounds quite extreme to ban nice domesticated frogs under the pretense that they are mean wild toads. Granted all domestic frogs and toads have some wild element in them. they adapt to the best of their ability to their terrarium and terrarium-keeper.
Taking two ball python hachlings, If we gently handle one with compassion for 30 minutes before feeding while taunting the other towards agression in the same time span before feeding, we should expect to see a significant difference in behavior them as adults.
Reptiles try to the best of their abilities to adapt and survive in their environment. They make active efforts to adapt to the domestic terrarium and in that effort they really domesticate themselves in interaction with their caretaker.
Reptile keepers need to find out if their wild herps are wild or domesticated.
Maybe we need to make some compromises to our argumentation, and realise that wild reptiles almost do not exist any more. The only wild reptiles in the US are free ranging ones and freshly wild caught ones.
I regard my loved gecko like a book of genetical and individual diversity. Valuable to me both as a piece of wonderful diversity and an animated individual who has certain valuable traits.
I would argue that the AR activists have twisted our normal understanding of the phrase towards recognizing only an extreme minimum of animals as truly domesticated (to a "high enough" degree).
An animal-friendly understanding of the term "domesticated" is perhaps to grant most animals in companion animal husbandry admission to this circle of "truly domesticated (to some degree) animals"?
What other, positive or negative consecquences do you imagine, should we broaden our understanding of domesticated animals?
Enjoy all our content free of charge with a user account that gives you full access to every feature.
For added visibility, paid options are available - post in our Classifieds, showcase your business with
Banner Ads or a Directory listing, promote reptile events, and more.
