Today celebrates a group of animals that have been neglected by the animal welfare and conservation communities for far too long—reptiles! Today, we recognize Reptile Awareness Day by giving them some long overdue recognition for their uniqueness, complexity, and intrigue.
Reptiles are a group of vertebrates (animals with a backbone) that are cold-blooded (meaning their body temperature changes with their surroundings), air-breathing, and have scaly skin. Some examples of reptiles include snakes, crocodiles, lizards, and turtles. Like many exotic animals whose true home is in the wild, reptiles face threats to their species, including habitat destruction, pollution, climate change, and overexploitation from the exotic pet trade.
Like many exotic animals whose true home is in the wild, reptiles face threats to their species, including habitat destruction, pollution, climate change, and overexploitation from the exotic pet trade.
Reptiles are Among the Most Commonly Traded Animals Globally
Reptiles and birds are the most frequently traded animals in the world. In 2022, 8.8 million reptiles were kept as pets in the United States alone. Their large litter sizes, ability to reproduce regularly, false beliefs that they require minimal care, and relative ease of transporting eggs over live animals likely contribute to the popularity of reptiles in the pet trade.
Reptiles in the pet trade can be sourced in two ways: through captive breeding or caught in the wild. Animals who are caught in the wild and sold to the pet trade often die in large numbers due to stress, disease, and poor conditions during capture, transport, and captivity. Concerningly, studies documenting reptiles exported from several countries indicate an illegal trade rate between 10 and 100 times the volume of the legal trade, which could have devastating impacts on wild populations of these animals by increasing many species’ risks of extinction.
Although reptiles continue to be prized as pets, many owners release their animals when they grow too large, become too costly, require too much time, or live far longer than their owners had anticipated. In 2018, researchers discovered that most reptile listings online sold for under $100 USD, which makes them affordable to many people (including those who may be inexperienced, unknowledgeable, and ill-intentioned) despite being potentially dangerous and highly sensitive wild animals.
Reptiles who were intentionally released or escaped their enclosures can survive and breed, leading to an increase in invasive species in a non-native environment. Non-native chameleons, geckos, alligators, frogs, toads, turtles, tortoises, iguanas, bearded dragons, corn snakes, rat snakes, pythons, and boa constrictors have been discovered in both suburban and rural areas in Hawaii, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, and California in locations in which exotic pet ownership of these animals was common. Some of these animals are known to have established self-sustaining breeding populations, which threaten native wildlife by driving these species towards extinction through competition for resources.
Reptiles Have Complex Needs that Cannot be Met in Captivity
Despite being so heavily traded and privately owned with such little attention paid to their complex species-specific needs, an article from 2019 found 37 studies confirming reptiles experience a wide range of emotional states, including stress, distress, excitement, fear, frustration, pain, and suffering. Human perspectives of different animal species, and our belief in their capacity to suffer, are heavily influenced by how much they differ physically and behaviorally from us. For these reasons and others, animals that are typically perceived as the most different from humans, including reptiles and fish, are often neglected from the larger animal welfare picture. For example, over two-thirds of all Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) member research has focused on mammals, with just 8% of all research dedicated to reptiles. Therefore, even facilities that keep these animals and claim to be experts in their care have a limited knowledge of their needs and thus a questionable ability to care for them appropriately in a captive environment.
It seems that reptiles, despite perhaps being less “animated” or “relatable” than the animals we are more familiar or comfortable with, suffer in captivity in many ways that are not so different from the elephants or apes that we traditionally have focused on in animal advocacy efforts. If you agree and think that reptiles deserve the same amount of consideration and care as all other wild animals in need of our protection from exploitative situations for human entertainment, share this blog to help raise awareness about reptile welfare on this special day devoted to them!
