Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My question actually spawned from one of Bill's responses. How do people feel about feeding wild caught food to their captive gators?

Granted, wild gators eat all kinds of garbage and rotting food. However, the flipside is that they've been doing it since hatchlings, right?

Does anyone have a comment on whether being a captive croc implies a weaker immune system than a wild croc, and thereby more susceptible to an infection from parasites in wild caught food?

Mr. F

I don't think being a captive croc implies a weaker immune system.

What it may mean is that they may still need to develope a response if the come across something they've never seen before (ie, wild fish instead of frozen rodents). This may or may not be noticeable, but unless luck has it that the first wild meal is an exceptionally pathogenic one, then illness is unlikely.

Two points important points that stem from this discussion.

1) Captive bred animals live longer, and healthier lives then wild counterparts (assuming of course, this is a species well understood, and husbandry is ideal). The main reason for this is not having to deal with predators, sickness, drought, other gators, parasites, famine ect ect.

2) As our understanding of reptile keeping evolves, and for smaller species, natural vivaria are becoming common place, we have begun to realize that miniscule versions of wild stressors may have more benefits than not having them. Does this make sense? You could say, a minature drought might be better than a constant water level; a fluctuation in food availability might be better than a prey/week schedule, and limiting, and not sterilizing parasitic burdens might not be such a bad thing.

By limiting, I mean regular deworming, avoiding/treating external parasites, and keeping a very clean enclosure.

Alot of this is opinion of course

Ian

I remember reading a paper from Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge in LA where they studied wild hatchlings and captive-born and head-started alligators of the same age to see if being captive born made a difference. As I recall, the captives actually did better that their wild counterparts both in terms of size/weight gain and mortality.
It's been a long time - I'll see if I can find it.

Bill