When they did cost "as much as a 5 year olds weekly allowance" there wasn't as much of a demand because it was always said that WC's don't eat and usually have to be force fed, or will wither away and die over time because of lack of feeding and heavy parasite loads. Now they are really worth some money the importers are going to catch on and instead of releasing so many females after laying our CH clutches, the will start sending more over because we will be willing to pay more for them. The asian markets do take a lot of them too for food and handbags, but now they are worth more to us do you really think those animals which were destined for Asia are not going to still go there. We are just going to get more adult females that would have been released if we hadn't been eager to pay more for them.

My point is this, we need to be responsible herpers and understand what we do has an impact on the wild populations of the species we love. If you are going to get animals from a wild source, either directly or indirectly, make it hatchlings. They have such a high mortality rate in the wild that the impact of us taking 200,000 a year is less than taking 10,000 adult females a year. The adults have proven they are the strong and can live through all the harshness that the environment provides. They need to be left where they are and allowed to produce many more generations. I don't want to hear 20 years down the road that the ball pyhon is on the verge of extinction in the wild because of overharvesting.
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1.21 ball pythons
1 speckled kingsnake
1 snapping turtle
1.0 argentine horned frog
1.1 English Bulldogs

[ Hide Replies ]

• Is some of this getting out of control or is it just me? - coyotethug, Fri Jun 3 03:41:02 2005
• RE: Is some of this getting out of control or is it just me? - jeff favelle, Fri Jun 3 09:01:34 2005
• RE: Is some of this getting out of control or is it just me? - coyotethug, Fri Jun 3 09:36:16 2005
• This IS free market forces at work! - sparke303, Fri Jun 3 16:33:58 2005
• The prices aren't "up"... - tc@screamdreams, Fri Jun 3 20:00:50 2005