When you have never researched the needs of an animal, it can be difficult to know where to begin. There is tons of information on the internet available to use for free, but when it comes to animal care a lot of it can be outdated when it comes to providing a quality life. What can you do to avoid the pitfalls that come with misinformation?
1) Start your search: Nothing has to be perfect right off the bat, it never hurt to just look at what's out there!
Just start googling and see what comes up.
Get the links of every possible care guide you can find and just start skimming through them. Although there are a ton of great resources online and we have a ton of information at our fingertips, you should always be skeptical of anything you read online unless it can be backed up with more than one source. Basic care guides can be found for almost every common reptile in the hobby.
Pet store sites like PetCo have free care guides available for reading and use (found here). That being said, PetCo does not hold the highest standards of care. Take anything you read from a corporation website with a grain of salt. Rather than seeking out general chain store advice, you can branch out to find reptile specialty stores in your area or even around the country and see if they have websites with care guides available (such as Reptile Rapture here).
Compare the information from all the different sources you have and pick out their similarities and differences. I recommend writing out similar information on a separate document for yourself and localizing it into your own source. That way you can collect all the similar care advice into one spot rather than having to re-check all of the sources you used every time. Then, you can write out all the conflicting information in a separate document so you can see all of the information you need to do a deep dive on.
Say for example that one resource tells you that a snake can be kept on aspen bedding (a dry wood-shaving type bedding) while another resource tells you the snake needs high humidity. You need to do more searching to find the best way to provide the animal with its needs.
2) Seek out advice: If your desired pet exists in captivity, then there are surely people who have owned them before!
Ask questions!
If you come up with some conflicting information, it can help to talk to people who have experience with the animal. However; understand that just like the care guides, people can have varying opinions as well. You can reach out to more than one person to get their insight and weigh your options based on any thoughts they share that are similar to each other.
If you don't want to speak to keepers one at a time through direct messaging, you can also try out forums and websites like reddit, facebook, or discord where there are plenty of reptile-specific advice groups full of people who have experience with your species of interest and are more than happy to share their knowledge.
People can sometimes be difficult to deal with, and not everyone is open to answering questions. Understand that people have their own lives and may not always be able to get back to you. If anyone in a group is ever mistreating you, being mean, or belittling you for your lack of knowledge then they are not someone worth talking to! If they're giving you more trouble than they're worth then you don't have to rely on them.
3) Support it with science: The great thing about the internet is that there are tons of scientific papers available for free!
Put your thinking cap on.
If people cause you too much trouble, or if there are still questions you want answered, then searching for scientific articles on your desired species may be your next move. The pitfall here may be that the paper will focus on some specific aspect of the animal so you'll have to explore more than one. The ones you'll want to look for when trying to figure out its habitat needs are papers on their native range, if you want to know about the animal's behavioral needs you'll need to look for ones on the animal's behavior.
The other thing you need for scientific research is to know your animal's Latin name, which is structured like Genus species when written. For example, ball pythons are Python regius and bearded dragons are Pogona vitticeps. Scientific papers may be difficult to read or understand sometimes, but remember that if something is unclear you can always check what it means! A great free resource for scientific articles is Google Scholar. Searching for your desired topic can be as simple as searching "Python regius behavior" and a ton of articles will pop up.
Some articles will be available in full for free but others might lead you to websites that only show the abstract (or summary) of the paper. If the rest of the paper is hidden behind a paywall you can try to move on to a different paper or if you want you can always email the researchers who wrote the paper. In my experience researchers and professors are usually happy to share free pdfs for their papers if you ask, because most scientific article hosting sites don't even pay them for the article. They don't lose any money in just sending you their paper themselves.
4) See it to believe it: Look for videos and photos of your desired pet in the wild, you can learn a lot from their native habitat!
Every animal in captivity exists in the wild.
YouTube is a great resource for videos of your desired species in the wild, or even in captivity. Raw footage of the animal in its natural habitat are shared regularly because the subset of the reptile hobby that goes herping (herping is the process of catching or observing reptiles and amphibians in the wild) usually likes to share their finds! Observe their native range and natural behavior to get a sense of what is right and healthy for your pet to experience.
Videos of the animals in captivity also exist, and some people also use videos to showcase care guides of their own rather that writing them down. You can also use these to write up your animal's standard of care like you did with step 1. Just like before, be skeptical and only trust something if it has been seen throughout several sources.
5) Stay mindful of misinformation: A lot of sources online may be outdated, so if something feels off don't be afraid to call it out or look into it further!
The most common issue I see in online care guide are that size requirements for animals run small.
For any animal, it is important to remember that in the wild their space is pretty much unlimited and they can explore endlessly if they chose to. Many care guides online will recommend sizes of enclosures that are really far too small for an adult individual of the species. For example, although it has been changed now, PetCo used to recommend a 10 or 20 gallon tank for an adult ball python. For reference a 20 gallon tank is 2 feet long, and adult ball pythons can reach 3-5 feet in length. A 5 foot snake in a 20 gallon tank is pretty much sentenced to never move again because of lack of space. For a snake to have an enriching and peaceful experience it should AT LEAST be able to stretch fully along one side of the tank. PetCo now recommends a 40 gallon tank or larger for an adult ball python which is more appropriate. I personally use an enclosure for my ball python that is 4 feet long, 2 feet deep, and 2 feet high and it is filled with decorations and things she can explore if she chooses.
Your animal is going to spend its whole life in its enclosure aside from the times you take them out for handling. Keep this in mind and think back on it when you are deciding on enclosure size for your animal. You can start a baby in a smaller enclosure for ease of finding them and feeding them, but always think in the long term.
If you have any questions about any of these steps, would like clarification, or even would like help looking for materials for your research: feel free to send me an email or even leave a comment on this post!
Comments