Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Is it just me or is anyone else NAUSEATED by some of the ads for red eared sliders being posted lately?
Like the one with the flat box full of them??
I have heard, though I don't know first hand, that these little things are sometimes kept in coolers so they don't have to be fed. Is that true?

Yes, I'm nauseated by much of the ads I see on the classified forum. While I don't care if hatchling turtles are sold, there's no other reason to sell hatchling sliders than for cold, hard profit and nothing else. We have a crisis in this country with sliders, and those mass breeding and selling them just don't seem to care about the animals, only the cash. If you want to sell baby turtles, then for God's sake, sell painteds or muds! Or at least incubate the sliders for males, so that the average person buying them won't end up with an 8" turtle!

Katrina

Good points but how many of them even live to be 4 inches?
Also, I never even thought of the incubation temps being used as a birth control method. Good idea.

I agree that the bulk-pack picture is pretty disheartening. Nothing has changed for these wholesale breeders other than they can't sell them in the U.S.
There is an RES page somewhere that mentions how many millions of RES hatchlings were sold in the U.S. between 1956, when they first became popular and 1973, when hatchling sales were outlawed. It ascertains that less than 2% ver lived more than a year.
Now that same popularity is widespread throughout Europe and Asia. So many turtles have been abandoned in Asia that they have become an ecological threat in many areas. They are prolific breeders and are eating up available food sources at such a rate that native species can no longer compete.
As horrible as the packaging pictures might look, it's the tragedy of what's happening after the turtles get out of the box.
Bob, Philadelphia.