Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi all,

I'm interested in the thoughts of people here on the subject of killing animals in the course of research.

What are the thoughts of the majority? Are herpers happy with the destruction of large numbers of animals for research purposes by Museum workers, venom researchers, or physiologists?

My own view is that I am comfortable with the concept of sacrificing animals if there is no alternative way to conduct the research; if appropriate ethical approvals are obtained (and adhered to); and large numbers are not involved.

I have definate problems however with people who conceal their use of animals in this way, or who are deliberately deceptive (i.e: offering homes to animals they fully intend to kill), or who take and sacrifice hundreds of specimens of a taxa just so they can be stuffed into Museum collections.

How do others feel?

Cheers

David
PNG Snakebite Research Project

-----
David Williams
-------------------------------------------

PNG Snakebite Research Project

Australian Venom Research Unit
School of Medicine
University of Melbourne
Parkville, Vic, 3010

School of Medicine & Health Sciences
Taurama Campus
University of Papua New Guinea
Boroko, NCD, PNG

-------------------------------------------

I took an arthropod class in college and we did a fair number of hunts where we would go out as a class and collect spiders. I would come across a beautiful spider who was making a beautiful web and I would watch it and marvel at its adapted abilities to capture prey. And then I would grab it and dunk it in a vial of alcohol. We had to collect and classify over 100 specimens down to subspecies level. That is when I fell out of love with the scientific process. I did it to save my grades, but I winced everytime I had to sacrifice an amazing creature just so that I could stick it under a scope (or dissect its pedipalps or spinnerets) to figure out what subspecies it was. I believe in admiring nature without sacrificing life.

I do understand that some sacrifices are needed to further our understanding of some wildlife and nature, but I believe that it is done more readily than is needed. When museums or other collections have hundreds of preserved samples of one species, that is way too many in my opinion. To collect in the name of science is a crutch for some people.

For my senior thesis I was to study two montane forest types and see how their populations of spiders differed. I had gotten good enough by then to visually identify to species level (or close) most of the spiders that I found, but I was supposed to collect over 1000 specimens from both forest types to identify them to subspecies level. That meant dumping them in alcohol again. I didn't do the project because of moral issues with killing that many spiders (as well as many other species due to collection methods). I didn't feel that it was imperative to know the subspecies of these guys to prove the point of my research (that two adjacent montane forest types support two extremely different set of species) so I just didn't do it. Why not just visually observe the specimens and identify them to genera, or species level when possible, and still make the point of the research?

Sorry for the long explanation (too much coffee this AM), but I feel the same way about research and snakes. It is necessary for some research, but it is practiced too often in my opinion.

Derek Morgan

I discovered a new species of huntsman spider in 1999and have been unwilling to disclose its location for these reasons.It is very rare and and local specific a thousand specimens could distroy this species gene pool totaly.Yet I am willing to distroy thousands of mice and rats in the name of a fat healthy snake collection,its a catch 21.

I (oddly, perhaps) do not have a problem with breeding animals for food, whether it be for human consumption or for other animals, so your analogy doesn't work for me personally. I, however, would not raid wild populations of mice and take joy in bringing them home to feed to my snakes, if industrially raised mice were not available. So I place a very high value on "wild life" regardless of the species, but I'm okay with breeding mice to feed to my snakes. I am especially okay with breeding feed species for man (especially seafood) to keep from raping the ecosystem to feed ourselves. The farm raised animals are a sacrifice so that the wild creatures can continue to exist. And I am very cool with that.

Derek

Strange I thought that we did agree.Or at least I agree with what you had to say.Captive raised animals belong to the breeder they are omitted by proxy. Unless it is to improve a gene pool of a wild population, witch almost never occures .Tho it sounds good in theroy.I was saying some populations can not handle the loss of even one individual,but I digress I often and will continue to collect wild creatures but not to kill.Yet when I collect a snake it is dead to the wild gene pool forever.

I'm not much of a fan of killing animals for museum collections either, why do we need to dissect something just to see if this bone is different from that one when if the same animal is kept alive we can learn how it lives-there are still things we can learn from common species, not to mention rare ones. How many rough scaled pythons have been found, about 10? If we killed and dissected 5 all we can learn is body structure, and maybe whether it had an internal ailment. If we keep them alive and healthy we can learn throughout the whole lifespan, maybe 30-40 years. If the same animal should happen to "just die", however, by all means do whatever it takes to figure out why, and learn whatever more is possible in the process. There should be more ways to figure out subspecies than cutting something apart.

Sorry, I misunderstood your post. I thought that you were remarking on the dilemma of not wanting to kill animals, but having to do so to feed your snakes. Perhaps the "catch 21" is what threw me off as I have never heard of that presumptive sardonic saying. Glad to know that we think alike.

Derek

For the most part, I share the same feelings as yourself.

This is something which is often overlooked by conservation minded folks. While I certainly do not see collecting for scientific purpose being a huge detriment to the ecosystem, I do feel it needs to be considered, and the scientific community should be factoring their collecting into the loss of a species. With most animals, it is certainly minimal. But we need to be very careful with rare, threatened, or endangered species.

I am actually working out a program to teach students what is hurting the environment. This program will work in outlining damages including clear cutting, select cutting, collecting for skin and pet trade, and finally, collecting for research. In most cases, research collecting will be the lowest effect. However, some cases given to students may actually show that the biggest thing damaging a species, at least currently, might indeed be science.

The point of this is to make kids aware of what is hurting the environment, and the levels of positive impact things are having. While the program is designed for kids who will grow up to be in the large portion of the public not doing scientific research, I would hope it teaches the future scientists that they need to control for their damages as well.

Science is not exempt from human impact on the environment.

Gavin Brink
Wildlife Program Coordinator
Midwest Museum of Natural History
425 W. State St.
Sycamore, IL 60178
www.mmnh.org
wildlife@mmnh.org

Ive never been a fan of killing wildlife needlessly and have often been lectured in how valuble it is to the scientific comunity after I get into a rant about the suject.

Though I understand it may proove of some value in some aspects, with DNA testing evolveing as it has I cant phathom how one can justify needing new specimens for scientific, sub species indentification or atleast the extent of specimens that they justify taking. "Oh hey, heres a perspective new species of gartersnake. This form is only found on one loan mountain top. Lets go catch and kill all the specimens we find so we can varify its a new species". It just seems to be a contridiction to being a conservationist. I know conservationist and biologist are 2 different things but how could one study animals as a profession without some sort of conservational mind set?

There is no doubt that there needs to be some specimen database for the biological aspect I guess but Taxonomy has evolved into a new era and I dont see that new era needing to pickle every specimen they come by for sampleing when the can clip a scale off and let the animal return to its life. Visual cues are no longer the sole way to properly ID somthing.

I am by no means any sort of profesional and I dont mean to sound critcle to David, Wolfgang or any of the other pros who visit here. You guys portray your passion through your writings and I know dont like killing specimens. however, many other "pros" seem to think its the right thing to do and even if it is how can you say it is?

Wild populations are too impacted by all of the other aspects of Human interference. They shouldnt be further stressed by the people supposedly trying to save them or bring them into light.

Anyway, rant off.

David:

My views are like yours. I've been involved with medical research all my adult life. Sometimes there is just no way around using a live animal, however the work must fall under that institution's animal use oversight panel. I make any of my animals that died in captivity available for Museum collection, this way they get specimens without having to sacrifice alive one.

Best,
Al Coritz
-----
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

Here's my opinion (and I'll tell you beforehand that I'll probably get flamed and that I'll definitely be in the minority here).

The question itself seems to be rather loaded. Do you have any data to back up that museum workers, venom researchers, or physiologists are "destroying" large numbers of animals?

The fact is the #1 problem that herps have going against them is habitat destruction. It isn't commercial collection (for most species this is true anyway), museum collection etc, hobbyists, etc.

People always say that an animal in a jar is wasted... However, an animal that is taken out of the wild and put in a cage is just as "dead" to nature. The animal in the cage will die and all data will be lost, and the one in the jar will still be there 60 years later for whoever wants to collect data.

Museum collections serve as a permanent record of what animals are in what areas, and often show lots of data that cannot be obtained from other methods. When an animal is collected, it isn't always known what the animal may hold in the future. It isn't possible to do most histological work on live animals... Pictures don't work reliably for scale counts. When it comes down to it a photograph of an animal usually won't hold up in court, but a documented museum specimen will.

As long as animals are collected responsibly and in a sustainable nature, there is NOTHING to lose by museum collections, and VERY VERY VERY VERY much to gain.

With that said, I also agree that there are circumstances where collecting is not needed. However, also keep in mind that if collecting an animal here and an animal there is going to ruin the wild population, then the animal is already functional extinct or at least extripated from that area.

If you wanted to look at the variation of copperheads across the nation I guess you could theoretically travel all around, photograph etc... But you'd still only get a small snapshot of what you could get by traveling from museum to museum, counting scales, looking at pattern differences, looking at size class differences, looking at stomach contents, looking at hemipenal variation, looking at reproductive status of the animal when it was collected for whatever given year etc (this is just a VERY SMALL example of how museum collections can be used).

What is there to gain from looking at a dead, pickled body of a snake when you can simply learn how to photograph and take the proper pictures of the entire snake for documentative purposes? Why do you need an actual specimen for proof when you cant even proove that the specimen came from where it was said too? and more importantly why would you need every specimen you find from a region that has one known ssp for comparison? Did we all just get forced back into a time where DNA test werent the definative way of taxonomy? Is color and pattern of a snake that is similar between all ssp so important a factor in finding out what the snake is? Didnt DNA testing more or less wipe out the need for this extensive killing?

I have had these same conversations with you on here and over at VR several years ago and your still are as ignorant as ever. Yes, I know who you are and you havent changed one bit. How many snakes thousands of snakes have you killed in your poor attempt at playing Herpitologist? You are not a professional and have no buisness killing every damn snake you find. no one does!

I apologize to everyone else as I have a bad habbit of coming here and ranting. Maybe I am missing somthing. maybe there is validity to this guys methods. I just dont see it and from an ethical standpoint its sickening. He is not a profesional and he lays out even less of a supported argument then I do, if thats posible >.>

Atrox788,

If perhaps you would learn how to spell, then your post might have some creditability.

Randal Berry

Its my call sign Poor spelling = me.

I didnt ask for credability nor do I care to have it. I am not a profesional. What I said about Mr Neal can be traced back many years ago if one were to tredge through the thousands of post to find it.

I disagree with his methods and his ideology/ethics on the issue. He posted his opinion, I posted mine. Thats it.

I apologize for my poor gramar. If that enough to make my post not worth reading them by all means feel free to skip over them in the future.

Yours truley,
Atrox788

Well,
at least your showing some improvement.
You had only 5 mis-spelled words in that post.......LOL!

Wow, what a reply... let me take this point by point.

What is there to gain from looking at a dead, pickled body of a snake when you can simply learn how to photograph and take the proper pictures of the entire snake for documentative purposes?

Well, scale counts cannot be taken from photographs... It is hard to get total length of the snakes from photographs. Have you ever tried taking head morphology measurements from a photograph? Have you ever tried taking DNA analysis from a photograph? Have you ever tried to examine gut contents of an animal from a photograph? Have you ever tried to do reproductive histological work from a photograph? Have you ever tried to look at historical changes in time from a large number of species from a very large area from a series of photographs? These are all things that are much easily done from preserved specimens.

why would you need every specimen you find from a region that has one known ssp for comparison?

Well, having them in a collection will show a historical trend. For example, it wasn't known that the black-mask racer (Coluber constrictor lantranculus) had moved west across the Mississippi river until we started looking at museum specimens. They are a very common snake here, and for the last 20 years (if not longer) they've been here and no one had even noticed. Not only that, but I don't understand where people get these ideas that every animal captured is put into museum collections. It is called sampling for a reason.

Did we all just get forced back into a time where DNA test werent the definative way of taxonomy?

When did we leave a time when morphology and physiology isn't important anymore? DNA analysis is a great tool, but only one tool of many in the box of those that are investigating relationships of taxa. DNA testing is *NOT* a definitive way of examining taxonomy.

Didnt DNA testing more or less wipe out the need for this extensive killing?

What is extensive killing? Have you ever worked in a museum? Again, people that talk about this seem to not even have their facts straight. I'd like to see some of the numbers you are talking about. And by the way, we also now store DNA samples of every new animal cataloged in our museum, and many others are now doing the same thing.

I have had these same conversations with you on here and over at VR several years ago and your still are as ignorant as ever. Yes, I know who you are and you havent changed one bit. How many snakes thousands of snakes have you killed in your poor attempt at playing Herpitologist? You are not a professional and have no buisness killing every damn snake you find. no one does!

Again, tell me what numbers you are looking at. If you don't think I'm a professional I won't lose any sleep over that. I don't kill "every damn snake" I find. Once again, you are the one that is showing ignorance by mixing up information and spewing out hearsay with nothing to back it up.

He is not a profesional and he lays out even less of a supported argument then I do, if thats posible

You again are attacking me saying I'm not a professional. So what if I'm not? I have been working in a museum for the last decade, have published on alligators, frogs, snakes, salamanders, leeches, and other various animals. Whatever that makes me I'm fine with.

"You again are attacking me saying I'm not a professional. So what if I'm not? I have been working in a museum for the last decade, have published on alligators, frogs, snakes, salamanders, leeches, and other various animals. Whatever that makes me I'm fine with."

Could you post your name, the name of the museum where you work and where your published findings can be found ? Ernie Eison

My name is Bobby Neal (as most people that have hung around here for a while know).. I publish as Robert Neal or Robert G. Neal.

I've been working at Arkansas State University under Dr. Stan Trauth for the last decade in the ASU Museum of Herpetology.

In 2002 I presented research on Tail-coiling in ringneck snakes and won first place for undergraduate research at the Arkansas Academy of Sciences (I was a sophomore in college then). This paper is currently in press in Herpetological Natural History & some of the data is also in Herp Review.

I've worked on Illinois Chorus frogs and was published as:
McCallum, M.L., S.E. Trauth, C.R. McDowell, R.G. Neal and T.L. Klotz. (2002 [2003]). Calling site characterization of the Illinois chorus frog (Pseudacris streckeri illinoensis) with additional notes on population size and breeding choruses. Herpetological Natural History 9(2):183-185. I won second place in the state for undergraduate research from the Arkansas Academy of Scieneces.

McCallum, M.L., R.G. Neal, S.E. Trauth, and V. Hoffman. 2003. A herpetofaunal inventory of the Arkansas Post National Memorial, Arkansas County, Arkansas. Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science 57:122-130.

Neal, R.G., M.L. McCallum, C.R. McDowell, S.E. Trauth. (In Press). Alligator mississippiensis (American Alligator) nest and nestling ecology. Herpetological Review. This is the only recent info on Arkansas Alligator hatchings in the wild that has been published as far as I've been able to find.

I'm the assistant web manager for an up and coming online journal backed by PARC and the World Congress of Herpetology (proof here). I'm mostly working on back-end programming for journal article submissions, etc.

I've also worked long term on the ozark scenic rivers national park, have worked with Ozark Hellbenders in a monitoring project, have worked with Alligator Snapping turtles in the wild and in captivity long term, have worked on many national parks (George Washington Carver, Arkansas Post, Wilson's Creek). I was also the primary investigator for a herp survey at Fort Chaffee (military base). That data is with the military and you can probably get it from them if you'd really like.. The information is:
Trauth, S.E., R.G. Neal, and M.L. McCallum. 2003. Annual Report on the Inventory of Amphibians and Reptiles at Fort Chaffee. Unpublished report to the U.S. Army.

I'm currently working on my M.S. in Biology under Dr. Stan Trauth (here is his page)

The first time I typed this out my message was lost and I had to redo it... This is a sample of some of the things I've done. I don't really feel like digging through my old files and listing information for an online forum etc... If you have any questions please feel free to ask.

Yours truly,

Bobby Neal

Seems a little defensive there Bobby N. as if I'm suppose to know who SnakesAndStuff is . For the record I have been checking out the forums and posting for years and have never heard of you by name. As for your resume and published works are about what I expected. So how large is the living collection at Arkansas State University ? Ernie Eison

Our living collection consists of a handful of timbers, some cottonmouths, a few copperheads, various Arkansas salamanders and frogs. In all we probably have a live collection of 25 or so individuals (I don't know an exact number as I only take care of the snakes).

To sum it up, I don't think that unless someone can come up with evidence against collection for museum specimens other than those on moral grounds we're just going to spin our wheels all day long and get nowhere. The best quote I've read on this matter was by Winker in 1996 in a article published in Conservation Biology. It is as follows:

"Opposition to collecting on moral grounds should be treated as a religious view: a view to be respected but not to be imposed upon others"

With all of the field research Bobby has done and is currently performing, I can see why he doesn't maintain a large live collection at the Museum. Some of us have also remembered some cool pics posted by Bobby of his PERSONAL COLLECTION. Politics can also play a role in what may be kept in a museum collection.

I know several Museum people that would rather maintain live animals than preserved or at least keep the preserved to a minimum. And others that want to pickle everything that crawls! It's obvious that Bobby is not doing this.

Good grief, both sides of the fence on this discussion work hand in hand in the advancement of Herpetology.
-----
Tim Cole
www.Designeratrox.com/
www.AustinReptileService.net
www.AustinReptileExpo.com/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<
Conservation through Education