In their natural habitats, reptiles are important components of food chains as they both eat and are eaten.
Reptiles as Predator and Prey
Reptiles are important predators within the food webs of their habitats. As such, they help keep animals that humans regard as pests under control. The wise farmer does not kill the snakes around his farmstead. In many parts of Asia and Africa, monitor lizards are encouraged to inhabit rice paddies, coconut groves, and other farmland to reduce crop damage by eating huge amounts of crabs, insects, and snails.
Reptiles in turn are prey to large invertebrates, fishes, amphibians and other reptiles, birds, and mammals. Eggs are the most vulnerable stage in the life cycle while the vulnerability to predators after hatching varies with the size of the hatchlings and the size and type of predator.
Both Reptiles and Their Habitats Suffer the Pet Trade
An estimated 11 million pet reptiles—mostly turtles, lizards, and snakes—live in U.S. households and their popularity as pets is growing, according to the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association. That figure, while far lower than for cats and dogs, means that about one of every 25 households includes at least one reptile, and many have two or more.
Nearly 100,000 ball pythons and 30,000 boa constrictors are imported annually into the United States alone as well as large numbers of lizards, especially iguanas, and turtles. The global trade in reptiles as pets contributes to depleted wild populations, damaged habitats, and the individual suffering of the animals involved.
Animals that make it to the pet store may be sold in injured or weakened condition. As many as 90 percent of wild-caught reptiles die in their first year of captivity because of physical trauma received before they were sold, or because the buyers cannot meet the animals’ complex dietary and habitat needs.
Captive iguanas, for instance, often suffer from malnutrition and bone disease because they don’t get the diet and ultraviolet radiation they require. For humane, conservation, and public health reasons, the Humane Society of the United States recommends that reptiles not be kept as pets.
Compounding the problem is the fact that many people flush or dump reptiles into habitat occupied by native reptiles where they can become an invasive species. Red-eared sliders, for example, native to the Mississippi drainage from Illinois south, are now established all over the world. In Washington they are threatening the vanishing Pacific pond turtle, and in southern states they are compromising the genetic integrity of yellow-bellied sliders by breeding with them. The Europe Union banned the import of red-eared sliders because of the damage they are said to be doing to European pond turtles.
Turtles Suffer the Most
Of all the reptiles, turtles are the hardest hit by the pet trade and habitat destruction. Turtles don’t spew eggs like fish and amphibians; instead, they rely on longevity, replacing themselves over decades. Some turtles, which can live for 120 years, don’t become sexually mature until they are 10 to 20 years old.
Some species of turtles, which are also collected for food and other uses, are in danger of disappearing in the wild altogether because of the commercial trade. The Old World turtles, especially those of China and Southeast Asia, have been decimated for a variety of reasons, and now New World turtles are being imported to meet the need.
Many countries worldwide are making attempts of varying degrees to conserve turtles; such efforts are complicated by cultural practices that demand turtles for food and medicine, and in the case of the sea turtle that roams over vast areas of ocean, cooperative jurisdiction of many different nations.
It seems impossible to think of someone catching a robin and selling it in a pet store. We now take it for granted that those animals are totally off-limits, but in many cases catching and selling wild turtles is perfectly legal.
(Steve Garber)
Dennis Holley - Looking back, it's clear that I have been a science nerd my entire life. A simple, almost toy-quality microscope my poor parents scraped ...
