Just Discovered A Bad Side To The Hobby . . .

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There is a massive problem with all these "Keyboard Warriors" or "Arm Chair Herpers" that think they know everything about reptiles because they have it in a cage and can provide "appropriate husbandry" for it! I started my reptile passion by collecting animals in the bush and putting them in small boxes and jars and I still go out herping when ever I can! Unfortunately in defense of these arm chair herpers you can no longer go out and catch animals or even handle them legally anymore!
I have been in the Hobby over 15 years now and have watched it change and evolve so dramatically it is scary. My collection is well over 100 plus animals and I have a lot of morphs (no jags) but I also keep heaps of wild type Locality's and absolutely love them to bits!!
Keep in mind Single morphs (Albino) do happen naturally!
The glorification of "designer" animals and the disregarded "Plain or Boring" animals does make me sick! I know of many that simply euthanize undesirable animals and that really does make me mad! I have animals in my collection that are problem animals and yet I will never euthanize or try to sell cheap or palm them off!
I think this is a great thread and I am really happy to hear that there are still people passionate about our natural and locality animals!
 
You know @Oshkii from what You've posted from your own collection I'd say all your animals are stunning!

Personally I've only met a handful of individuals involved in the hobby in any way who I haven't recoiled at for some reason or another, most of those reasons stated above. I get that not everyone is interested in everything (I like monitors and some dragons personally) and by no means should they have to be, but there's plenty of piss-poor attitudes across the board. Each to their own but I don't have time for many, and would go out of my way for fewer still.

Thanks Smitti, If I had the space I would be keeping a lot more. I've been thinking about doing some outdoor enclosures but I don't want to encroach on the homes of reptiles and amphibians already living in the garden. I personally haven't met many keepers, except where I acquired my own reptiles. I'll probably keep it that way. Not really the social type anyway. I'm happy with just keeping reptiles and I don't want to be involved in the various cliques. Someone once told me that they kept a low profile on the herp scene to stay out of the nastiness, and now I'm starting to see it. But it's also nice to talk to people that have the same obsession.

There is a massive problem with all these "Keyboard Warriors" or "Arm Chair Herpers" that think they know everything about reptiles because they have it in a cage and can provide "appropriate husbandry" for it! I started my reptile passion by collecting animals in the bush and putting them in small boxes and jars and I still go out herping when ever I can! Unfortunately in defense of these arm chair herpers you can no longer go out and catch animals or even handle them legally anymore!
I have been in the Hobby over 15 years now and have watched it change and evolve so dramatically it is scary. My collection is well over 100 plus animals and I have a lot of morphs (no jags) but I also keep heaps of wild type Locality's and absolutely love them to bits!!
Keep in mind Single morphs (Albino) do happen naturally!
The glorification of "designer" animals and the disregarded "Plain or Boring" animals does make me sick! I know of many that simply euthanize undesirable animals and that really does make me mad! I have animals in my collection that are problem animals and yet I will never euthanize or try to sell cheap or palm them off!
I think this is a great thread and I am really happy to hear that there are still people passionate about our natural and locality animals!

Same here Shaggy77, many of my fondest childhood memories were going out in the bush, catching and admiring reptiles and amphibians. I remember spending most of the warmer months walking/driving up and down the gravel driveway in the morning and afternoon, seeing Bobtails, snakes and goannas crossing to and fro from the bush to the farm. I would often check under rocks and logs to find tiny skinks and geckos, and sometimes the occasional baby snake. It was always an exciting time seeing the odd carpet python in the shearing shed. There's many more, but I'm not going to write an essay on it. It's strange that many of these activities are illegal.
 
I've lived in WA for a decade or so and for the most part I could count the number of people I trust in the hobby on one hand. For some reason reptiles attract the scum of the earth, drug addicts, welfare cheats, weirdo’s that do a relocate course and need to set up a YouTube account of every relocate they do. And of course they're all over night experts who are so thin skinned they need to be committed to a psych ward and undergo therapy if you pull them up on bad husbandry (or don't sugar coat everything you say). There was one guy over here who started calling himself the Perth Water Python Man, a new keeper who got into reptiles as an adult, but at the time had never even kept a water python. They're all keen as mustard to be known in the hobby for something. If you just sit back and watch it's really amusing, and I have to admit I liked to poke them for their reactions (though since having kids four or so years ago I've lost the passion for calling them on their BS). For some weird reason all these new experts in WA can't even breed BHP's, a python that is no harder to breed than any other if you give them what they require. I'm a very new and very amateur keeper and reptile enthusiast and happy to be so. There's so much to learn when you talk to the actual veterans of herpetology, its sad that the new keepers probably think the YouTube and media whores are the veterans though.


There's some great people here as well though. I was lucky enough to meet one of Pythoninfinites mates when I began keeping and he has been a great mentor and introduced me to some top people in the herpetology scene.


It doesn't matter what the cliques call popular or what the kids on Facebook drool over. Rule number one is to keep for yourself and keep what you like. I have some fairly rare (in the hobby) imbricata that are locale specific but quite dull. I keep them because they are interesting to me. I wont breed them, because they'd be hard to move the progeny. For the most part if someone just want's a single pet snake or two, it makes sense that they want a bright coloured display animal. There will always be a few purists out there, but you probably won't see them all over social media, they simply don't keep for the accolades.
 
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its sad that the new keepers probably think the YouTube and media whores are the veterans though.

That brings to mind a guy on youtube... He'll post videos of him talking, with some kind of clickbait title. First thirty seconds is him telling you "Your animal will DIE because you're an idiot and don't know what you're doing" with the remainder of the four/five minutes extolling his own virtues and who he knows in the scene. It's a pretty clear showcase of pretty much anyone who thinks they're a someone in the hobby. Big egos require a lot of stroking, and there seems to be no shortage of stroking fingers around unfortunately.
 
I started keeping snakes in 2005 but although I was on here I never joined until 2010 and since then I have noticed some huge changes to the hobby. Unfortunately these changes haven't been positive apart from prices of some animals becoming more affordable. The hobby is full of idiots who have no respect or care for species specific animals and although it seems the hobby has died a little I think the old school keepers just keep to themselves breed less and enjoy their collections in private. I don't consider myself an old school keeper but I love my pure diamonds and enjoy a small collection of quality that is easy to care for and costs little. Selling snakes in my opinion these days and for a long time is a horrible experience.
 
I can't say I've had what I'd consider a "bad" transaction, other than putting a deposit on an animal once and coming to collect it two weeks later to find it in a horribly neglected state. I've had many sellers be very guarded or even standoffish upon initially making contact/meeting them, but the moment they've realised I was a genuine enthusiast and wasn't going to rob their house, low-ball them or waste their time they've tended to open up quite a bit, even give tours of reptile rooms/collections etc and chat for hours. I guess I've been rather lucky.
 
.... I have to admit I liked to poke them for their reactions (though since having kids four or so years ago I've lost the passion for calling them on their BS).....

Gee that's not like you mate - you have triplets or something.

It's mostly the system over here that entices some people to be dodgy, but it is true the Perth herp scene has a degree of people running agendas for their own gain. For my part I only came across 2 people who were truly dodgy one worked in a government department and one came from over east to "help" WAHS.
 
hmm there has always been this issue, more so now a days to back before the first clutch of Jags where available. However back then it was more along the lines of pure morphs and locality specific creations, who could make the first close to jag looking specimens etc. which was the best part of the hobby IMO, then the jags became available in the next year jabs where available everywhere. Only a handful of breeders kept going with what they had been working with for years but the rest (high reputable breeders all snatched up the latest trend and IMO swamped the market with jags everywhere. I've been in this hobby for 14years now and I can say that in the past couple years wild types and locality specific morphs are making a come back.

Even though you might not think that most appreciate a nice dull looker there is always someone that will. I have bred some nice looking wild type cape yorks that have produced some amazing unique colors and patterns, there has always been a thing with dulls producing amazing looking off springs. But also if you see a true wild specimen in the wild you will find most to look sooo much nicer then a captive muddied looking animal any day.

The problem I have is when new keepers want to breed anything with anything to make a quick buck no matter what the cross creates, which can muddy the gene pool in captives and also sometimes land the breeder in a lot of trouble. Another thing that annoys me is these new keepers will sell whole clutches before hatching and then after they are fresh from the egg in a full clutch combo with little respect for the animals and no interest in anything more then the money. And the last thing that I find annoying is people bartering a breeders price down to nothing only so they can re sell the animals for much more then what they paid for.
 
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I was flicking through a Gecko thread on a UK herp forum a while ago, and there were loads of pictures of some really stunning Australian geckos in morphs or just with really high contrast patterning. But then one goose (I'm refraining from using worse words here) had posted a picture of a wild marbled velvet gecko and said that it was 'undoubtedly the most ugly gecko he'd ever seen.' This was followed by agreement from some of the other members in comments below. Needless to say I was so disgusted I immediately left that site.

I'm not a gecko person, but wild marbled geckos are beautiful because of the way that they seem to glow at night when light is shined on them (or at least that's the effect that the pictures give.) I would really like to tell that person that if our native animals are too ugly for him then he shouldn't have any at all.
 
Being a relocator on the central coast for 10+ years, I think many people would actually be surprised at the naturally occurring morphs that are out there in the wild. Anything available in the hobby has or is slithering around out there. Wild snakes can look a bit dull or ordinary until they shed. My local python subspecies here is the yellow diamond. I have caught and released everything from the most melanistic to the most high, high yellow, and everything in between. There are striped carpets in the wild around the nth coast and queensland as well as hypo etc, etc. The albino morph was initially a wild caught juvenile that was taken into captivity and bred.
The only morphs that don't naturally occur and therefore are not in the wild are the jags and the hybrids, (by hybrid I mean crossing of subspecies or species, lets not start a scientific debate on hybrids !) many of these diamond cross bredli or cross carpet, cross jungle cross whatever don't look anywhere near as good as some wild caught diamonds I have seen, and the owners or breeders of these are basically pleasuring themselves when they put up photos saying how great they are.. The biggest buzz I get as a relocator and a self proclaimed protector of wild snakes, is the releasing of a wild animal back into its own environment , that would fetch hundreds of dollars in the hobby. Its an internal happiness, that most older and true herpers can only understand.
 
When looking around on some (American, I believe) forums regarding snakes and morphs, I was absolutely disgusted and horrified by one topic on the forum that went on and on about how boring wild type Australian pythons were, and how, when breeding their own 'super fancy' morphs, they would probably end up killing (not euthanasing or selling, KILLING) any 'normals' or borings.
What was even more shocking was how many of the comments agreed with this. Another person went on to say that all 'normal' types should be euthanised because they were a 'waste of space' or making all of them unable to produce.

I can't remember entirely, but I do believe they were discussing Jungle's.

Regardless of the species, have any of you guys ever seen an 'ugly' Aussie snake? I sure haven't.

It really did upset me to see all of those people who could not see the beauty and individuality that each wildtype snake is. That they were seen as a waste product of breeding.

Personally I prefer the wildtypes to some of the new things coming out- YES the morphs are amazing looking animals, but I really do love and appreciate the 'how they were made' look.
It's why, when buying my Stimson's I paid $200 for a pure Wheatbelt hatchy instead of $80 'mixed heritage' one.
It's why I paid $300 for my RHD Woma and spent weeks searching for a locale specific one rather than just a 'woma'.
That's why now I'm combing through the web looking for a pure Diamond to add to the collection.

Nothing is better than seeing a snake in its natural habit- nothing better than seeing their natural beauty.

Sure, my little Stimmie isn't the flashiest, brightest, most colourful snake out there, but he's the prettiest Stimsons in the world! (Not that I'm biased or anything xD)


I only see two bad sides to the hobby.
1. Bad people
2. I CANT STOP BUYING MORE SNAKES HELP
 
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