kaijutegu:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/science/reptiles-amphibians-pets.html



There’s an article from the New York Times that was published on the 10th of November that claims that reptiles and amphibians are unethical to keep. However, this article relies on a lot of unsupported data to make its claims, which is a problem because it’s trying to take a moral standpoint based on available evidence… and the evidence used here is bad.

I’ll do a tl;dr now because this gets long.

-When you base your ethical opinions on what you think is scientific evidence, you need to look at what the actual evidence is. Not all “scientific studies” are actually worthwhile, valid, or grounded in reality.

-Disregard anything Clifford Warwick is involved with because a.) he’s in bed with PETA and therefore has a MAJOR conflict of interest in these studies despite pretending not to and b.) he doesn’t actually have a clue how to do science

-You should also not listen to a person who thinks that macaws are good pets (and keeps parrots, including at least one macaw, as a private owner) but it’s unethical to keep reptiles because we can’t provide for their needs. This person is either deluded or has been misrepresented.

The article presents itself as a debate over the ethics of keeping reptiles as pets, framed around this review of some of the issues surrounding the practice. http://veterinaryrecord.bmj.com/content/181/17/450

The review is ultimately hopeful and talks about how many issues are resolving. It acknowledges that there are bad actors and bad elements in the trade (particularly when it comes to illegal importation), but overall things are kind of improving. But the article in the NYT doesn’t really acknowledge the scientific basis behind why reptiles can make good pets and frankly it kind of seems like the author didn’t really read the review fully; instead, it relies heavily on opposing opinions that aren’t grounded in the same level of peer-reviewed science that the first review is.

The article uses a lot of dodgy sources. HSUS is one of them (not to be confused with your local humane society, HSUS is a different animal altogether). Clifford Warwick is another and hoo boy are there issues with using his work, primarily that it’s not based in objective reality. Rather, he’s notorious for making up numbers. One of the big objections to keeping reptiles as pets, which a lot of people have heard, is that 75% of pet reptiles die within their first year of captivity. That’s a pretty shocking number- and blatantly false. This claim was first published in a 2012 study by Warwick- the whole article spends a lot of time leaning on Warwick, which is bad because his scientific methods are simplistic, reductionist, and fear-mongering. Warwick’s 75% fatality claim comes from a really poorly-conducted study which can be found in this article: http://chelydra.unm.edu/consbio_2014/Literature_Discussion/PetHate.pdf

The methods were simplistic: see how many reptiles were imported into the UK over a time span and then see how many people in the UK have pet reptiles. The 75% claim is enumerated as such:

“We calculated that in the six years from 2006 to 2011, over 4.2 million

reptiles probably entered the UK trade system. At least 3.2 million of

these are likely to have survived to reach households, and just 800,000

will currently be surviving in homes.”

This is going to fall apart very quickly.

Warwick’s legal import data is bad. He pulled it from TRACE, which is an intranational data collection that pulls from all over the EU to track live animal imports and exports. Hypothetically, this could be good! Except… reptile movements aren’t required to be logged in TRACE. You can’t use the data there for good stats on reptiles. It’s misrepresentative reporting.

Imported animals: ~400,000 per year (including an estimated 25% illegal trade, which he pulls from an article not about reptiles, but about the spread of avian influenza)- this is said to be an average+an estimation (so in other words… not an actual number)

Animals bred in the UK: ~300,000

Total animals: ~700k, and then take that over 6 years, that’s 4.2 million

There’s some major problems here. First, it’s statistics done by using a handful of estimates and pretending they’re real hard data. Estimates have their place and can be very useful, but this is neither the time nor place to use them. Secondly, there’s no indication as to what those animals were imported for- labs still use reptiles on a regular basis, zoos still import animals, and his 300,000 number is made up. In 2012, when this article came out, the Federation of British Herpetologists (FBH)- the UK’s USARK, basically- reported 250,000 as their number- he added in the 50k just because, I guess. Over a six year period, that’s an additional 300,000 animals that didn’t exist.

So what about that 800,000 number? Well, first, it’s wrong, but also? That’s not the data that the PFMA reported. For 2012, the PFMA didn’t say there were 800,000 pet reptiles. They said there were 700,000 pet reptiles total (300K lizards, 200K torts/turts, and 200K snakes- that adds up to 700K, not 800K)- and these estimates are done by surveying 2,000 randomly selected adults across the UK. An organization that’s significantly better placed to know how many reptiles there are is the Reptile and Amphibian Pet Trade Association (REPTA). This is a professional association that looks specifically at pet trade numbers- not household ownership. Their estimation is more like 8 million- which is a HUGE disparity. But of the two, REPTA has much better data collection methods and a much more carefully targeted survey technique. I rather like this summary/presentation: http://www.repta.org/Overview-of-the-reptile-trade-(PDF)-2014.pdf. It goes into a lot of detail on the state of the reptile trade in the UK, where the discrepancies come from between the PFMA and the REPTA numbers. BUT. This isn’t a piece on the reptile trade in the UK, it’s about why bad science leads to bad opinions.

So. Let’s hop back to that 75% mortality claim.

Simply put, it’s wrong. It’s based on comparing two averages and drawing a conclusion. In the world of Better Science, actual studies have been done on reptile mortality. A PLOS1 article looking at reptile mortality within the first year after purchase came out in 2015- this is the most recent of such studies.

http://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC4640569&blobtype=pdf



These researchers actually talked to reptile keepers and importers instead of relying on estimates. They went to reptile shows and collected real data and used data collection techniques that hold up to peer review. Their conclusion?

“Overall, 3.6% of snakes, chelonians and lizards died within one year of acquisition. Boas and pythons had the lowest reported mortality rates of 1.9% and chameleons had the highest at 28.2%.”

This is crucial to understanding why the NYT piece and all of the anti-pet-reptile rhetoric that uses that 75% number are flawed. There’s actual reasons to dislike the pet reptile trade (conservation, unethical breeding, animal welfare standards, to name a few), but not the ones that are represented here.

The NYT article also leans heavily on another opinion piece written by Warwick, which is also full of really bad science. I didn’t mean to turn this into a Cliff Warwick character assassination, but he’s really representative of something here. He’s not animal rights or animal liberation himself (and apparently got litiginous about that once before), but he does consult for AR groups and works with them regularly. He’s also SUPER onboard with fear-mongering tactics. Particularly bad is the use of zoonoses associated with reptiles- what Warwick and his coauthors don’t seem to understand is that this is not unique to reptiles. They refer to dogs as being good pets- and they are! But dogs are also associated with zoonoses. Warwick also makes the claim that “In addition, there are at least 30 behavioural signs of stress regularly observed in captive reptiles, such as hyperactivity, interaction with transparent boundaries, hypoactivity, co-occupant and aggression.”

Well, yes. Those are signs of behavioral stress. Animals do that. They have body language. It’s kind of a thing, you know? I can think of at least thirty behavioral signs of stress regularly observed in dogs. The fact that an animal has body language means absolutely nothing- and the fact that we know what that body language indicates means that captive management, whether in a pet home or a professional setting like a zoo or aquarium, is improved.

Warwick’s anti-pet stance doesn’t come as much of a surprise, though, given his professional associations. He has strong ties to PETA and other animal rights groups that advocate for the complete non interaction of humans and animals. Like in this article about zoonotic diseases and public animal markets (aka reptile shows): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3545344/. If you scroll down to the bottom, PETA funding. Here he is again, perpetuating the myth of live animal skinning on an article about the fur trade: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/fashion-victims/news-story/26aa7e2f11ad121b7a4a22c01089889c?nk=dfc323fd8f4bcec32f3b4c0faf415922-1510544448

It’s not just a one-off thing, it’s habitual. PETA doesn’t help animals, and the studies they produce aren’t science.

I also want to point out another figure interviewed for the article: Lorelei Tibbetts. I’m not gonna tear into her like I did Warwick because she is not pretending to be a scientist, she’s just a vet tech who said something ridiculous and I don’t wanna get too creepy. Here’s her bit from the article:

“Reptiles and amphibians don’t make good pets “and should not be part of the pet trade,” said Lorelei Tibbetts, a vet technician and manager at The Center for Avian and Exotic Medicine in New York. Most of the time, animal patients come to her with metabolic or reproductive issues related to improper nutrition, husbandry and life in captivity.“It’s really not possible for us to care for these animals in order for them to thrive and live a decent life,” she said.”

And yet she sees nothing wrong with keeping macaws- to the point that she has one (listed on her staff page at the link in the article- seriously, I’m not being creepy here, I’m only talking publicly available, published material) and talks about what lovely pets they make. While she cautions against it for most people, ultimately what’s represented is a person who thinks that macaws are appropriate pets while leopard geckos are not.

Or at least that’s what’s published- I don’t know what questions were asked of her, or if there’s more things she said that clarify her position. But as it’s published, it really doesn’t make sense.

Ultimately, everyone has a right to an opinion. You may not like the reptile pet trade, and that’s your right! But when you try to say that science agrees with you, make sure that you know what you’re talking about. Not all data is good data. I know that reading papers is hard work, and I know that it’s super time-consuming, but understanding how to tell good science from bad science is important. We live in a time that can be defined by Fake News- why contribute to that? Why form an opinion based on categorical falsehoods and manipulated data- and why would you want to? That’s I think my ultimate problem with this article. It doesn’t present the sides fairly at all because it gives credence and representation to junk science. The article ends with this: “The contributors to the review (referring to the first article presented) hope that by heeding scientific arguments, rules about reptile ownership will be conceived of fairly.” Science isn’t a monolith and it’s not an actor on its own- it’s a process. It’s a crucible in which evidence is tested and refined and tested again, over and over, until you have something useful- a scientific argument. What are those arguments actually saying? That’s what people actually need to find out.