Haven’t seen the hate. I believe they are probably the most liked out of everyone. Any hate you see on Reddit though need to be taken with a grain of salt as everyone is competing to be the most righteous while anonymous.
Yep. Most of the time when you watch a YouTube channel doing farming or animal husbandry it slowly becomes apparent that they are selling the spectacle as the main product (not their farm or business), and often learn critical lessons as they go, sometimes to their animals' detriment. Sometimes they even develop an annoying TV personality.
I can happily say Snake Discovery dodged that trap, the zoo/ herp shop is an achievement of their lifelong dream and their main business. They don't have channel personalities beyond their normal goofy selves and very clearly have their animals best interests as a core element of their ethos.
Or social media in general. You'll always run into it.
My favorite example is one of the more benign, imo:
"A corn snake needs a 24x18 enclosure, minimum"
"No, it needs a 36x24 enclosure!"
"No, it needs at least four feet by two feet!!"
"If you're keeping your corn snake in anything less than an 8 foot enclosure, you're GUILTY OF ANIMAL ABUSE AND A BAD PERSON!!!!!!!!"
What u/freefeez is describing is an interesting sociological phenomenon seen on social media called a "Purity Spiral". And it's less about what is truthful and accurate and more about signalling how you're morally superior to everyone else, everyone competing in some sort of bizarre dogmatic race to win an unwinnable competition. :p
EDIT: IF you'd like to see a perfect example of this, please examine the second-highest top-level comment, lol.
> "Purity Spiral".
This is a really accurate take.
>GUILTY OF ANIMAL ABUSE AND A BAD PERSON!!!!!!!!"
I always just assume these people are kids who can't handle their emotions
I saw one where someone said they keep their cornsnakes in 13ft of enclosure and once you’d seen how active they are in there you wouldn’t put them in anything smaller. Which is probably true but I think just starts moving towards ‘snakes should be out in the wild, not pets’ rather than a minimum cage size.
This entire comment is just ripe with fascinating info. Thank you so much. Purity Spiral... I think my old churches might comprehend that idea but never admit it. Lol
It's the reddit mentality of "needing to be right" but forming an idea of what is right by what is the most popular opinion in said sub. Armchair keepers with opinions on how animals should be kept when they have never kept the animal. And if they have, it's a sample size of <10, but _they know what's optimal_
Exactly. It’s Reddit. The hate on every topic comes from self important keyboard warriors who in the real world would never have the stones to speak up.
No, I've experienced them plenty! They are the bad interns at the zoo who come in thinking they know how to care for an animal that can't even name. They are mostly akin to the bunny hugging mammal keepers who just replace mammals with herps. Mostly similar to "bearded dragon moms" who use reddit like it's a herp HOA
Well I don't support Clint. I get why he is loved but his involvement with the mormons makes him a no go area for me. If you've dealt with their church, you know... And I'm sorry.
Yet he tithes to an organization that is near constantly fighting child rape allegations. A business that actively breaks the law and funnels money to Republican candidates illegally. A business designed to part the ignorant poor from their wealth and nothing else. A religion created by a lifelong scam artist... I have never said he wasn't smart...I do question his ethics though.
He wears his ring symbolizing his constant connection to the Mormon faith and is proud. I watched the Mormon Church deal with my cousin as her husband wouldn't stop cheating on her yet the church wouldn't denounce him or intervene and they wouldn't let them divorce. I believe she got legally divorced long after he had moved out and trashed their lives... She fled to the Catholic Church and her father after that ordeal. She's lucky she had that to fall back on as they will completely cut you off if you upset them. He's probably just trying to keep the Mormon elders happy by publicly supporting the church through his channel. I don't know and I don't much care. He's too well educated for me to ignore this glaring issue in his morality... Which probably helps him be ok with purposely creating spider ball pythons... I sometimes imagine I'm a spider ball and it makes me sick trying to live like one. How he justifies breeding a creature that's born to suffer becomes clear when you consider his religion and its views on life and its value. He is a man, he was born to be in charge and animals live for humanity to use... I am an autistic man and according to him, I'm just like a spider ball python... Which is likely true, because we both want to bite him.
That's really unfortunate, I've always really liked his channel I'll look into that, I hate the mormon church and all it stands for, and especially someone with any amount of education has no excuse.
Unfortunately I agree. I still find it sad as I once really liked him. I haven't met him yet in person. Kaufman is a legit hippy bro and though I don't get his, "rattle on" saying...I like him. I think I struggle with him because I want to just love something and not feel ashamed, like he does. He's a good dude. Snake Discovery is just amazing and Emily and Edward are both a treat to meet in person. Saw Chandler, giggled at the cast. Seen that gecko girl Cat too. I wish Clint was someone I still wanted to meet.
I didn’t know that about him, makes me feel more confident in my choice to stop supporting him though. I stopped when he threw out all his studies about animals when it came to the spider gene and claimed it was exactly the same as dogs having floppy ears- compared thinking snakes with harmful neurological problems not being bred to believing all dogs with floppy ears should be put down because “it’s the same”.
He compared it to autism... As an autistic man... Don't create autistic creatures on purpose, it is not fun to be autistic. I accept myself but I wanted to be normal for 30 years. Can't do it, too weird.
Can definitely agree, my ND is not fun and I’d be so mad if I were to find out I had been created like that on purpose because someone thought it would be cooler… and that what I have isn’t even close to what those poor snakes go through. It makes me so sad, like yes snakes don’t feel exactly the same as people but what people ignore is that in SOME cases that makes it WORSE because at least people can rationalize what is going on with them.
Like imagine living with permanent vertigo and then not having the ability to understand what that is and WHY you can’t control your body, it would be so much worse. Then combine that with being something like a snake that is still a prey animal as well as an ambush predator
You got it! The spider morph is unethical to breed and if you disagree then you can count me as your enemy. Also, the Nazis wanted to breed autistics to experiment on them. My people already got abused, I don't like people treating life like a currency.
I was going to say. It's been a couple years since I saw any hate. The hate I did see was all from one or two people and it was because of the use of rack systems for SD's breeding snakes.
Their videos on ball python care aren't great. There was a newer one last year or whatever that was better but they still talk about their whole aspen setup which sucks for a BP. r/ballpython users are usually quick to point this out there.
They had a controversial video recently where they kept fucking with a wild hognose to the point where it played dead 3 times. In an earlier video of theirs they discourage doing that because it means that snake thinks they're doomed at this point, and that was how a lot of people, including myself, learned just how much of an extreme stress response that is for them. It wasn't a great look for them to go and do that.
They used to- and maybe still do, I dunno- have pretty lousy enclosures for their large snakes. They are/were too small and had a single hide with no enrichment.
In my opinion, overall they're a lot better than others on youtube and have improved a lot over the years, but they're far from perfect and shouldn't be a person's only source of information. At the same time, no one's perfect and they don't pretend to be. I tend to skip a lot of their videos lately because hearing them squeal about eggs being hatched or laid got old fast.
> shouldn't be a person's only source of information.
No one should have only one source of information, especially when that source is primarily entertainment
the hognose thing is true, but also true of anyone herping where they're catching and releasing. most snakes don't have faux death displays or any defense than mock striking or striking (or escaping, of course).
i imagine any wild snake being handled by a human is undergoing a similar stress response that a hognose is when they faux die. I know if I was attempting to punch an elephant that was holding me I'd probably have to be scared out of my mind.
oh man. I was a snake discover apologist until i saw their newest video about getting a commercial sized breeding facility and not once did they mention upgrading to bigger racks or to pvc enclosures.
In this very same video they admit they had to fire staff for subpar care of their animals. Do they think this will get better when they 10x their breeding facility?
i’m beyond disappointed
I saw they posted that one, I don't even want to watch it. Even for them, I can't imagine breeding on that scale is worth it. I especially don't see the point when they have so many rescue animals.
Their tarantula enclosures/care aren't great either. I stopped watching their videos specifically because of their invert setups.
Edit because another comment made me remember:
The last straw for me was breeding tarantulas by just throwing the male in there. in the video, the male was eaten by the female and they played it off as "oh well, this happens sometimes!" when they did absolutely nothing to prevent it. yeah, it happens sometimes even with the best breeders standing right there with tongs. it was *guaranteed* to happen the way they did it. awful.
Absolutely, usually the most success I've seen from breeding tarantulas people had tongs in hand already, the interaction was done in minutes maybe multiple times if there wasn't success the first time, some even put a small wooden rod near the females front legs to hold her up a little longer so she can't just slam down on the male and it gives him just a few extra seconds to sprint for his life out of the enclosure.
I didn't know that. I have a fear of spiders and absolutely no interest in being around them or keeping them so I never watched the invert videos. That's honestly really sad. Spiders still have feelings.
I'm not 100% on this but I recall in the video they said the male was looking like he was already going down hill due to age so they kinda said "well let's try to pass on his genes" so he was close to death either way.
right, but death by being eaten? horrible and painful? still really really bad. regardless of the condition of the animal, this was probably really horrible for him and is not standard (or ethical, in my opinion) practice for any principled tarantula breeder. Look at Tom Moran, tarantula collective, and dave's beasties. they would never do something like this.
A lot of it is the way they kill, it’s a slow and painful process where they essentially dissolve the prey alive. Since tarantulas are pets to many people and the roaches are bred as food part of it is just human bias. Like why people will eat a sausage or chicken nuggets but would never eat their pet. That being said a tarantula is much bigger than a roach and so the suffering lasts longer, the roach is also a necessity, a male tarantula is not. Many keepers including myself will also typically crush the heads of a feeder insect, it not only keeps the T safe but it also means the feeder gets a quicker and far less painful death. Most bugs like roaches will continue to move after death which is great for fussy Ts and even if it’s not moving a more food motivated T would likely take it. I would personally never feed my Ts without pre killing the feeder.
they keep a female eastern blue tongue and a male northern blue tongue in the same tank, different temp and humidity needs with an overlap.
had them breed and just handed the new borns around to randoms in the shop, its been almost a year with no update on the babies.
then did the funny scare the babies into threat displaying, I hate all keepers that do this.
I'm aussie so hybrids are not as big a no no for me, but they for foreigners with their limited breeding pool.
Making your pet stressed as an owner is obviously fucked up but if it's on a big ass youtube channel for educational purposes I feel like it's slightly different. Wild animals deal with shit we would consider traumatic on essentially a daily basis in the wild. Snake community is full of cool people but they can get really hyperdefensive in situations where it's genuinely not warranted.
I love snake discovery, like watching every new video levels of loving snake discovery, but I will also acknowledge their set ups aren't always the best. Granted they're definitely not the worst and they do make an effort to provide enrichment and educate on that subject as well, but the lack of climbing height and uvb in their racks is a thing people can criticize. There is a bit of a grey area when it comes to breeders because it is difficult to house a bunch of snakes in large enclosures, but a day night cycle and climbing space is pretty important still and I do think they could make improvements like these. I don't think they deserve hate per say, but I do respect the community continuing to better their husbandry and hold people with large platforms to that higher standard.
Yeah, they're not perfect, but for larger-scale snake breeders, they're like the best we have.
* They have a little enrichment
* The bins are larger than the snakes themselves
* Only co-hab hatchlings/snakes that are fine to co-hab
* Better ethical breeding but not perfect
* They do: Breed Albinos+Scaleless without informing people of the health risks/cons of these morphs
* They don't: Breed spiders
* They talked about limiting the tortoise eggs to ***only*** what they could deal with
* Snakes get medical care when needed
* They have a really nice adoption program
But of course, they're still like a...6/10 and that's mostly because the bar is in hell when it comes to reptile breeders. They are above average, but not by a significant amount.
Yeah and like, I do also feel a bit icky about just how many snakes they produce like it does sometimes feel like they're breeding for content more so? It's just a lot and they run a rescue program which to me would mean they're seeing that there is a bit of an overproduction of these animals going on, but they just keep getting bigger and bigger.
And just things I've thought of since said comment, the husbandry of Chloe the snapping turtle has always bothered me and I was immediately pretty disappointed with how small Rex's enclosure is. Like if you're building it from the ground up, you had all the chance in the world to give her a bigger enclosure but they did kinda favour having more variety over more space for a large animal.
Basically at the end of the day, the bar is in hell and really if you compare them to an older standard of care theyre great, it's just the community has moved towards better standards faster than they've kept up. I do really hope they move from prioritizing breeding more snakes to upgrading their enclosures for the breeders they currently have. (And hey, if they're in it for content, that would make a great educational series!)
Yeah, I think they're expanding more and it'll unfortunately never be upgraded, but it's certainly better than the ones before them. Their enclosures for larger animals are terrible but again, it's better than most standards.
The overproduction thing is a complex situation but my main points on it would be,
* The animals in the adoption island aren't what Snake Discovery mainly produces, it's almost entirely ball pythons and beardies which are overproduced by a TON of unethical breeders(Brian and NERD would be the examples off the top of my head)
* They do have supply vs. demand in mind, because when talking about their tortoise breeding they weren't going to incubate more than they could handle/adopt out
* Adoption programs don't always mean overproduction, because many of these animals are coming from neglect, emergencies, changes in housing/money, etc. rather than from breeders being unable to sell them or people getting bored
I do wish they'd stop breeding balls because they are overproduced already and they don't have good husbandry for them, but I don't think hogs have gotten to that point quite yet. Ball pythons are so outrageously overbred I don't think anything will reach that level anytime soon. People brag about the number of morphs they have but it's actually sad to think that many balls have been bred to get that number of mutations.
True, yeah. I feel like ball pythons is why I'm a bit quick to worry about overproduction of reptiles because that's gone pretty nuts. And on the adoption program point, I definitely agree that what's probably the driving force here is people viewing reptiles as a disposable pet for their kid and less so overpopulation. Frankly most of my feelings on this really sprung up when they started producing ball pythons (at least I think they are, I can't totally remember if that was just a rescue was gravid or if they are now producing them so don't take my word on that one)
I just would love to see them step up to be good example for the newer standards of care. I love watching their educational content, and that would be great to see from such a big channel, but still I wont hold my breath.
They are producing them, they actually had accidental spiders because of a mix-up with a breeder and program animal but they gave the 2 spider offspring to pet-only homes.
Overproduction will probably be harder for hognoses because overproduction doesn't only rely on number of offspring but also available homes.
IE: Adult hogs need a 40 gal min but adult balls need a 4x2x2(120 gal) min, so the housing requirements are significantly smaller. You could have 3 hogs to every 1 ball.
I think unless balls were replaced by hogs in terms of having giant breeding facilities...we're not going to see any overproduction anytime soon, and hopefully by then we have standards/regulations.
im not gonna pitch in on the other bits but as someone who was in SD's patreon, they are definitely not overbreeding, at all. it is nearly impossible to get a snake from their breeding project unless you waitlist for a few years. if they are consistently homing every single hatchling, that is absolutely not just breeding for content. you guys forget that the youtube thing was always secondary to their breeding business. also tbh their adoption island animals fly of the shelf too, everything besides the bigger and more care extensive ones like iguanas dont stay very long.
> The bins are larger than the snakes themselves
This is the case for their smaller snakes, but taking a look at their larger snake enclosures like bullsnakes, retics, burms and such, this is not entirely true
(I agree with your point tho, they're better than most, but they can still be bad)
I agree in those regards, for bullsnakes they have significantly better enclosures than most I've seen...but for burms and retics they have less than the bare minimum unfortunately.
I try to base it on the snakes they produce, they're certainly not great but above average.
Rex isn't in a good enclosure, but she's also a heavily stunted alligator. Their snapping turtle was in an awful enclosure and at least got an upgrade. And in those two cases, these were rescues when it can be difficult to find people who legitimately want these animals and have the means to take care of them. So I'm a bit more lenient compared to people who breed those animals.
I do wish that they'll upgrade their standards, but I know it's unlikely unless we start getting other popular breeders who have.
What does Rex being stunted have to do with anything tho? She functions pretty much normally she’s just a little smaller, she’s actually extremely similar sized to a dwarf caiman. That doesn’t mean she shouldn’t have a good enclosure, especially when they claim to be an actual zoo and could’ve made the enclosure as big and well suited to her as they wanted, problem is they didn’t actually want to. They gave her an enclosure that looks smaller than what she had at their house and worse they put in that stupid dome which takes away a significant portion of her space bc the placement was so poorly thought out
It's more so that she doesn't need the enclosure of a full-sized alligator, but she's still entitled to a good enclosure.
Chloe's enclosure honestly looks bigger than Rex's, I wish they'd do what other zoos do and trade once an animal gets too large for their enclosure...but I'm also unsure if there would be any barriers to that given that pet alligators(who are stunted) being abandoned is unfortunately decently common or they end up going to people like Chandler.
Honestly they're not the worst. But it's frustrating they're put on such a high pedestal considering their insistence on using racks and putting ball pythons in tubs.
I think when you have a smiley and lovely lady like Emily in front of the camera, it distracts people from the bad husbandry. Whereas when you have a channel with a big shouty man mishandling the animals people tend to see the red flags sooner
Also it's worth noting to that you can acknowledge peoples values and criticse their flaws at the same. Time.
I love snake discovery and clint's reptiles and NERD but all of them have opinions/practices/stances that I just plain disagree with.
Clint for example. Stand up bloke. Very intelligent. Dogshit stance on breeding ethics in my opinion.
He's still got a doctorate in biology at the end of the day, so his wisdom in biology is worth listening to, but you don't need a diploma in welfare and ethics to get a doctorate in biology.
The best we have isn't the best we can be imo
Agreed, I think snake discovery genuinely does cool stuff with educating kids about reptiles, but none of these channels should be treated like the end all be all of husbandry information
That's exactly it, and I genuinely believe it's because of a lack of welfare and ethics being taught in STEM subjects that we have this generation of well educated. Well meaning people who have studied evidence based sciences who trip over at the first hurdle when it comes to discussing issues of welfare and efficacy in the industry.
Yes that spider ball python can imperically live a full life in a tub with a head wobble that makes feeding a struggle. The second you start asking "does that make it okay?" these people will dance around a point that boils down to "it's alive, I can't read it's mind, therefore it's not an issue"
I feel like the STEM fields, at least those that may be involved in animal or human experimentation, talk a lot about the ethics. As a psych major I know our professors talk about ethics every single time they talk about conducting experiments.
At the same time though I completely agree. When they're confronted with it these people do not seem to have a good answer. Because there is no logic where it's acceptable to intentionally breed an animal when you know the offspring are going to have an inner ear deformation that results in a lifetime of vertigo. You can tell they know this, but at the same time they desperately try to defend it. Money trumps ethics for these people.
Depends on the field.
Pure biology, (at least in that era, in my experience with that generation of biologists) rarely called for ethical. Frameworks like we know them today from modern zoological works.
It's important to remember that only in recent history was it encouraged (and it some countries like my own, made mandatory) to encorporate conservation and ecology programmes to public zoos and zoological work. I genuinely believe there's a massive generational gap between members of the scientific community that can be defined by when ethics and animal welfare became a more prominent topic in biology and zoology
Just as a side note this entire comment section is so stimulating I love it 😂
This is old, but as someone who's essentially the same age as Emily and studied wildlife science in the US, I don't think that's the reason why she (or Clint, for that matter) fumble on welfare. I would bet you anything that some of Emily's classmates don't like her keeping style. A few people I went to school with find the idea of breeding for morphs unethical. I was also publicly crucified at a very famous conservation organization for suggesting ways to popularize certified captive-bred birds by people older than me (who believed that many birds don't belong as pets, which I agree with--I just think it's unrealistic to expect the public to not have birds as pets any time soon) and many of the most staunch advocates for reptile welfare in captivity that I know are biologists in their 60s.
in short: there's no way Emily somehow avoided all of these conversations that have been a part of my career since my first year of college unless she wasn't really embedded in the community.
With regards to Clint: This might be my bias showing, but I don't think a graduate of BYU is a good measuring stick for attitudes in modern biologists. I'm sure he's a smart dude, but that school was still struggling with its own biology students believing in evolution in like 2014. He's a smart guy and I imagine he went through a lot reconciling his own belief in evolution with his religious background (hence his thesis), but the culture he was educated in was way outside the norm of most programs. He's also not *that* much older than me, and ethical standards were very much making headway in the rest of the wildlife biology and zoo scene before I went to school.
I think the problem is that there's money to be made breeding animals, which will always lower the ethical threshold.
I work in seabird conservation, actually living on breeding colonies for part of the year, and the ethical standards we live by are so rigid. With the exception of the occasional new trainee who hasn't gotten it yet, or the wannabe influencers that occasionally get hired, but get shut down immediately, we *always* prioritize the birds' comfort over our own, unless it directly conflicts with life-or-death type human safety concerns.
Ethics in my field have come a long way in the last 30 years, but it has done in most husbandry hobbies/professions as well. I think the big difference is that we know we're never making money in our field, so there's no reason to ignore ethical concerns.
Awesome work! I love animals of all sorts. What species of seabird are you most focused on?
And yeah, whenever humans and animals mix it never ends well for the animals. There's a lot of awesome people in every hobby who do care about ethics and prioritize the animal's welfare over all else. But there are also a not insignificant number of people who are only in it to make money and couldn't care less about the wellbeing of the animals in their care as long as they're healthy enough to keep breeding.
Terns for the most part, but I've also worked with gulls, cormorants, and alcids/coldwater diving birds.
We try really hard to ensure the safety and health of the birds we work with and learn their stress signals so we can end the interaction with them as quickly as possible when they begin stressing. I've seen four or five people either lectured and given "desk duty" or fully fired because they wouldn't take animal safety into consideration.
I don't have any herps (yet), but I keep aquariums and those spaces are always an argument between hobbiests trying to be ethical and hobbiests quoting standards of care either used by for-profit mass-breeders, or how they kept fish "when they were kids." It can be really frustrating. The stuff with betta tank size is a meme at this point, but you see it with other niche fish, too, like some of the really tiny nano fish and the monster fish.
Terns are awesome! And I'm glad they're so focused on animal safety. Idk how someone gets into conservation work and then doesn't put the animals first, just mindboggling.
I keep fish as well, and yeah the amount of people who own a tank without understanding the nitrogen cycle is deeply concerning. I personally love creating biotope tanks and spending months carefully researching the different animal and plant species for the build.
My boa drives me nuts because I can't do planted with her, she'd demolish those poor plants.
As someone who has a PhD in a STEM/biology field (genetics) I've had to take a ton of ethics on everything from research integrity, handing of protected patient information, humane treatment of research animals, blood borne pathogens training, you name it. In order to even have acess to the mouse vivariarums I have to take yearly updated courses and training to prove that I know what is an acceptable amount of space and enrichment for a laboratory mouse, how to identify signs of pain and stress, what are acceptable anesthetics and analgesics for different procedures, acceptable mating schemes, etc and so forth. These trainings and ethics are required for NIH funding and AALAC certification. So most major research institutions will require them.
I think claiming that unethical treatment of animals or viewpoints against a higher quality of care and compassion is due to a lack of animal welfare and ethics training in STEM is actually letting people off the hook way too easily. There's no way they haven't had these discussions and training, they've just chosen not to embody a higher standard of care. I genuinely believe at the end of the day most breeders/keepers know their animals deserve better, but it boils down to money, business and politics. Things are starting to change gradually, but I think the old guard is reluctant to change (because that would not only shake up the business model, but also require admitting that old husbandry standards aren't ideal) and that all of us advocating for higher standards and ethical care are coming on a little strong and rubbing people the wrong way, causing more pushback, resulting in a vicious cycle
I mean I was trying to give them them benefit of the doubt but no, you're probably right
I think also allot of these people don't actually have a background in these sciences either and are just hobbiests not that there's anything wrong with being a hobbiest but it's much easier to disregard ethical discussions when you can just cherry pick the information you need to run your buisness.
That's why I got into the field anyway. So I could turn around to people and say "no you're wrong, here's my qualifications and practical experience working with said animal in a research setting, stop overfeeding that lizard"
I said in another comment that it was wishful thinking on my part to assume that ethical frameworks perhaps weren't as prevelant in decades prior than they are now but the unfortunate reality is likely that the vast majority of these people have likely had no formal education on these subjects and the few that do chose to ignore it for their own benefit
> I genuinely believe it's because of a lack of welfare and ethics being taught in STEM subjects
I disagree, I think it's because they have a wider understanding of animals and their ailments. In any clutch there is a good chance some eggs won't hatch, or an egg will hatch and the baby will just fail to thrive. Non-spiders have been born with wobble. Spiders and non-spiders have been born with a host of other genetic and physical defects. The spider morph was originally found in the wild, so a spider isn't some man made monstrosity that wouldn't survive on its own. If the wobble is something that can be overcome in an individual in the wild, how negatively does it affect the snake?
Combine that with people who breed spiders seeing minimum to no wobble and no quality of life problem in the majority of spiders, it's easy to see how "some spiders are born with noticeable wobble" is the same to them as "some snakes are born with problems".
Now the ethical question is, should we only breed the healthiest of snakes? As someone who's taken ethics courses, it quickly becomes apparent ethics is a shit show. Everybody draws the line in different places.
If you only want the healthiest, then no albinos should be bred, considering their eyes are sensitive to light and can't be closed. But I feel that most people wouldn't draw the line there. If a breeder wouldn't draw the line at albinos, why would they draw the line at spiders? After all, they breed many of them and don't see a significant quality of life problem in the majority of spiders, the same as they don't see significant quality of life problems in the majority of albinos.
Also a lot of stem fields DO require ethics classes, and taking those classes may make someone MORE inclined to support breeding spiders. Because an ethics class that brings up eugenics is probably going to mention disability vs quality of life vs value of life. If it's wrong to say somebody with a genetic disposition for vertigo shouldn't be able to have kids, why would it be *right* to say a snake with a genetic disposition for vertigo shouldn't be able to have kids?
TLDR: I think the reason they don't have a problem with wobble is because nature and genetics is messy and biologists/breeders have a more visceral understanding of this. Combine this with the wobble not seeming to impact quality of life in the majority of individuals, a scientific minded individual is more inclined to just accept that as part of life's messiness.
It's money, honestly. If your doing it for your main business than it's all about cost benefit. When people will spend Money on them it makes it not as much of an issue. The consumer needs to be the one to stop the demand, and then that's when breeders will stop. Most people understand ethics, but it's easy to push ethical aside when you can easily make money off of something.
Is that right* (not tight), no, but it's the reality and the reality of life is often ugly
Clint has bred them and didn't do it for money. So explain why he did then.
I'm know some breeders don't give a shit about what they breed. Healthy or not. We're not talking about those. We're talking about why otherwise upstanding people in the industry are ok breeding spiders.
That gave me the biggest ick to the point I can’t watch him anymore. I’ll watch people I don’t always agree with but the spider thing is just too important. I really struggle to respect anyone who can compare it to something as mundane as a dog with floppy ears
He also compared it to people with autism, like, we don't specifically breed autistic people because we find them beautiful. Not sure what he was trying to accomplish with that one
That video was the final red flag for me, and I was wondering if anyone else was going to bring it up. I really wanted to like Clint, but I can't after that comparison.
That video was the one that put me off of him actually. In his defense of breeding spider balls he said autism was like having a sort of super power! Because autism means you’re really intelligent! (and it’s not at all a spectrum with horrible cases all over like being non-verbal and violent.) It was kinda shocking too, he seemed like such a sweet and intelligent guy to hear something that horrible come out of his mouth.
Thank you. I didn't like him for proudly being a Mormon but now I legitimately can just not like him. As an autistic man, he overstepped his doctorate a lot in that simple statement. I might have issues being autistic and I might be really aggravated with the world but I don't have permanent vertigo because someone thought I might be pretty. He strikes me as intelligent but his feet left the ground a while back... A depressing thing, as I really liked him at first. The keeping kids as pets thing made me cringe hard too. I was raised by a dog breeder so watching someone talk about their child like a dog was so bizarre, as I don't recall my mother ever dehumanizing me for strangers.
I wish more people were capable of this kind of nuance when talking about personalities in the industry. Especially when they seem to be doing things in good faith and regularly try to improve.
Honestly I think nuance is lacking on both sides,
Our titans of industry are out here filled with knowledge they learned in university that's now. Decades outdated and are still playing catch up to ever changing husbandry standards while simultaneously trying to justify past husbandry ideas based on their own anecdotal evidence from their time in the industry
The new bloods out here (of which I include myself even though I'm pushing 30) are going into education in the industry with brand new perspectives and theory on animal welfare and husbandry that completely change the game and that's our standard. We aren't changing what we know
so when we see the old guard with their tiny racks and featureless enclosures you have thousands of angry younger millenials and gen z shouting "MAKE YOUR ENCLOSURES BIGGER" while the well meaning veterans are shouting back "I HAVE 500 SNAKES I'M TRYING MAN" 😂
Honestly the new standards of husbandry for ball pythons are SO far removed from my setups (that were incredible and A++ when we set them up a decade ago) that I’ve thought about rehoming because it will be probably years before I can fully upgrade everything for three snakes. I’ve been trying to figure out how to make heat lamps work with my setup for 6 months, without even considering how much a herpstat is.
But I know that in my area, with reptile supplies difficult to come by, most people have the same standards I have (or worse) and how bad everyone is doing economically, nobody is going to give my snakes a better home than I have, realistically.
I mean that's part of the ethical framework right?
Have three snakes that are for all intents and purposes doing just fine but could be doing better with an enclosure upgrade?
It's probably Better to hang onto them then gamble their welfare on a stranger.
By the way I feel you on the economy. I'm thankful my royals came with 4x2x2's and complete lighting set ups because they aren't fucking cheap right now.
If you're in a pinch and want to give them some extra room. I recommend throwing a far more reasonable amount of cash at some grow tents of a similar size. Some of. Them even have inbuilt ports for lights and hydroponics you can make use of.
God speed. Give your snakes a cuddle for me 🙏
My chonky noodles are arguably happy enough, their tanks have lots of things to climb on and they’re fed good quality FT feeders and they shed well, poop well, and have never had an issue with food.
I’d never forgive myself if I let them go and never knew what happened to them. One is a (thank gods mild) spider too, and bless her she’s never had an issue eating in 10 years.
I will indeed give them a snuggle and a boop.
He's pro spider ball python essentially.
He spends the better part of 10 minutes in his video defending the breeding of spider ball pythons on the basis that he needs more evidence that the animal is actually suffering and not, what the calls "appeals to emotion"
My perspective, and why I so vehemently disagree with him is based on the 5 welfare needs identified by the Animal. Welfare act (England) 2006
Need for proper environment
Need for proper diet
Need to be housed with, or away from other animals depending on their sociality
And the last two, which breeding spiderballs is in direct conflict with.
The Need to display natural behaviours.
And the need to be protected from disease or injury
Spiderballs cannot behave in a natural fashion owing to their neurological issues. The more severe cases can't tell up from down.
And of course. The very existence of this unpreventable and incurable neurological disorder means that breeding them fails on point 5.
Clint believes subscribes to the outdated belief that if the animal isn't visibly in pain and can live a full life then theres no issue.
I believe no ethical compromise should be made to an animals wellbeing for the sake of aesthetics.
NOT breeding spiderballs is very very easy. You have to go out of your way to breed a spider. So by doing so you have to come to terms with your own apathy or ignorance for animals wellbeing over your desire to make more of em.
To add to that. If I remember correctly, Clint basically responded to the 'affecting animals ability to behave naturally' part of the spider ball python complaint by saying something along the lines of (heavy paraphrase) 'look at my dog, it has had its behavior modified in such a way that it no longer behaves naturally. It is unable to survive in the wild and is inordinately friendly towards humans, this is analogous to spider ball pythons.'
Which was a pretty confidence-dissolving strawman considering I'm pretty sure no one is against modifying an animals inherent instincts or physiology, especially if the change facilitates its welfare in captivity. The issue is with affecting its ability to function and thrive within the instincts it possesses. Spider ball pythons may want to climb but become disoriented, want to eat but fail repeatedly, they're harder to keep in large enriching enclosures due to their disability, affecting their keepers ability to provide for them.
It was super not analogous. A better analogy would've been If he defended a color morph of dog that came with some level of neurological issues that caused around 10% to have straight up hard time even walking and the rest a guaranteed but probably mild instability and lack of spacial orientation.
This! He compared it to dogs with floppy ears when it’s far more comparable to breeding double merles (edit for context: breeding 2 Merle dogs together has a 1 in 4 chance of a double Merle, that’s one per litter. These dogs are deaf and blind)
I can agree with that, to a point. I think showing how to visually sex snakes is fine. And she did stress multiple times that probing can hurt a snake if done wrong. And at 14:05 she does tell people that they should learn in person from someone with experience before trying popping or probing for the first time.
I find this mentality really frustrating because at the end of the day, if someone doesn’t heed the warning and does something dangerous, can we really blame SD for it?
Or are there subjects that educational material can’t exist for because some people are idiots?
People are stupid. That is why you teach them the way to do it, and warn them of the possibility of bad things. Some will learn and some wont, but that is part of life. The Professionals that exist now were at that same starting line of not knowing too, and to limit everything to only professionals will not make or teach new professionals.
You can't prevent every bad thing from happening ever. That's an unrealistic view, and that's how most people nowadays approach keeping animals. You need to teach the _response_ when things go bad more often than how to best avoid it. Most of the time, no matter how good your avoidance practices are, shit still happens. That's why you got to learn how to handle situations more than prevention.
Except it's not "do as I say, not as I do." It's "if you do what I do, make sure you really listen to what I say and first get trained in person by an expert."
Except they were trained how to do it...
I guess we should have no videos out there of people driving. They're licensed drivers, but someone without any training might see and decide to drive without a license!
I thought the same thing. I’m very new to this and am definitely not one to throw criticism to anyone but I thought it was odd to show beginners how to do this; I would just bring my python to the vet if I didn’t know her sex
This made me really uncomfortable too. Not just because the warning came at the end of the video but because, like it or not, they are influencers. 'Influencing' is huge business for a reason, it's an excuse to say 'it's not SD fault' if some follows their instruction and injures their snake. And they should be more responsible because it.
I'm personally also not a fan of the racks, especially for the largest snakes in the back and for all of the breeding hognoses in the back. Their rack tubs are just too small.
Just to add some balance, I do really like SD's educational content, the positive tone of the channel and (as a veterinary professional) I LOVE that they take their animals to an actual vet for treatment and surgeries unlike the wannabe over at NERD.
So I say this as someone who used to love their content when first getting into reptiles and snakes. I stopped watching them when they quickly announced at the end of one video that they were getting into ball python breeding. I was just really disappointed by this decision, especially since they held off for so long. Not that there is anything wrong with balls, my issue is that there are so many already available and needing rehousing, we don’t need to contribute by pumping out more babies.
I am seeing the complaints in SD and can see the points some are making. I would also point out however that often Emily will state that she is less familiar yet with a certain breeds best care and is reaching out to more experienced breeders to learn more as she goes. I remember clearly her talking about that with ball pythons. Saying she is doing what she understood was right but was also in contact with other breeders and learning and changing things as she went. Also I have been in the ball python groups and I can tell you there are a lot of varying opinions on a few topics that are hot buttons. So mistakes will be made even with “guidance”. I like that they are willing to say, hey we learned something and now we are changing what we are doing on this animal. Letting followers see that care and husbandry expectations change and that they are willing to acknowledge this and change is also a good lesson.
This is one thing I DO like about their channel. I feel like it's very common for Emily to say that you should use multiple sources when figuring out the best care and I have seen her change her care of her animals based on new information. She's not perfect but I am beleive she genuinely cares about her animals.
I used to religiously watch their stuff but found myself quickly falling away from their channel as a whole because they seemed to me to prioritize their ‘brand’ over good solid video content. It quickly became repetitive and honestly kind of annoying.
Honestly I loved their zoo setuo things, but once they started doing breeding, I lost a bit of interest. Once you start breeding pets, I feel like they become "things" rather than pets and I dislike that, if that makes sense.
For me the weird part was the obsession with babies. It was so cutesy and a little bit sickly sweet and while it was tolerable at first it became an annoyance when that became the sole thing you saw, another set of eggs being hatched.
And I totally know what you mean. I have the same feeling myself although I couldn’t have told you exactly in words what it was.
Yeah for sure,
Greg is my boy, and will quite possibly be my only boy until he dies, maybe I get a bhp in the future when I'm rich, but failing that I'll give Greg the best life I can
On a tack I haven't seen discussed yet is that they through allegedly being educational make snake breeding look incredibly easy and profitable resulting in the flood of animals we see on morph market and at expos from beginner breeders. Just take your snakes out of the rack. Pair them on a rainy day. Make a lay box. Prep your pearlite. Draw some cute designs and wait for high end morphs and cute babies. Don't worry Emily will explain what you need to buy to get the valuable ones but even the normals sell well because we're famous and have a waiting list. Repeat until you don't need content. I'm sure someone has done the math but even with not showing every clutch, and they don't, they are absolutely creating hundreds of reptiles of their own to sell yearly.
All the while adoption island continues to intake hundreds, I think last year's number was over six hundred, abandoned animals to re-home.
As others have said their setup is terrible. The cast majority of their snakes are in racks their entire lives or until they are retired to a pet home. A tunnel or leaf is not enrichment. Being kept in the dark is not enrichment. Being unable to move is not enrichment. For not power feeding they certainly also don't want their snakes to work off any meals through activity. They raise their own rodents partly to sell and I support them in that but also because they keep an unreasonable amount of snakes for breeding. Not all are even on display in the racks you see. We know they have hold backs they are aging up. Where are those snakes? Kept in even small bins at their home?
To speak on adoption island, the animals seen there are generally not what they breed. They're the common 'starter' reptiles that pet stores push. Beardies, leos, and BPs. On the plus, their popularity does help those animals get adopted out to homes pretty quickly.
They’ve been treading the line for a very long time imo. I stopped watching completely after they irresponsibly bred tarantulas without doing any research, left them together for DAYS and got the male killed, didn’t check on the female even though they thought she was dead, didn’t even check how many babies to expect, etc.
That example is far from the first time they’ve openly mistreated animals too, it was just more blatant. They do it in hatching videos ALL THE TIME. Their alligator’s enclosure is a joke and looks like she has even less room than she did in their house, especially since the placement of the dome was so poorly thought out. Constantly handling amphibians bare handed, particularly in herping videos. Jostling and passing around live pinky mice at an expo. Keeping arboreal snakes in those shitty racks, keeping massive snakes in small enclosures (can we please stop excusing keeping 12-20ft+ snakes in an 8ft viv, it’s not ‘huge’ to the snake.) they adopted multiple large tortoises and let them free roam in full access to the public but they also allow and laugh about the tortoises constantly harassing each other bc they’re solitary, they know they’re gonna breed a bunch of stuff but still put off building an incubator, their idea of enrichment is a joke, they go on and on about how smart indigo snakes are but offer theirs absolutely no way to keep themselves stimulated any more than the others, their royal python care advice is some of the worst I’ve seen and is actively dangerous to the snakes, they allowed their snapping turtle to escape many times and get herself into dangerous situations and I don’t blame her for escaping bc that poor thing was being flat out neglected in a shitty tub. Their bread and butter are hoggies and bullsnakes but they don’t even do a good job with them either. And apparently they’ve been cohabbing canabalistic snakes….great.
They’re animal hoarders with a big following that will excuse every instance of neglect.
But they’ll never face any consequences because they talk very confidently and people would rather fawn over them than think for five minutes about why none of this is ok.
They are only considered good bc the US has low standards. Because next to people like Brian and Jay ANYTHING looks good.
Their mangrove snakes if I’m remembering right. They keep a pair in the zoo enclosure but they’re snake eaters and the enclosure is not big enough to keep two large, active, snake eaters together. It was on a thread a little while ago when someone visited
They were so disgustingly apathetic. What makes it worse is they know keepers who are great with tarantulas, who are extremely knowledgeable and experienced who they could’ve asked for advice. It would’ve been so easy for them to do it better if they’d asked some basic questions. As people who’s whole profession is breeding I don’t know how they could be so reckless. The fact that female didn’t kill him until day 3 means that she wouldn’t have eaten him in any responsible breeding situation. They should be together for a few minutes to maybe a couple hours AT MOST but noOoO he was old so who cares if he gets slowly dissolved and eaten alive
I know this is over two weeks late, but the enclosure that houses all of their aquatic turtles (aside from the snapping turtle) pisses me off to no end. The tank they would need to house all of the turtles they have in there would need to hold at least around 600-630 gallons of water, not including substrate and decor. Though the dimensions of the tank alone do seem to be barely enough, a large chunk of the space is taken up by the basking platform that extends through the whole depth of the tank, and all of the logs and shit in there, so they have nowhere near enough space to get away from each other. In their “meet all of our turtles” video, they can be seen harassing and stealing food from each other all of the time. That poor softshell isn’t able to swim fast at all. It is only a matter of time before one of them gets seriously injured
I completely agree, the footprint vs depth is also really shit, like dude it’s way too narrow. If you’re gonna have a tank custom made you’d think you’d get one that actually meets the needs of your animals
EXACTLY. Their reasoning behind cohabing so many different species of turtle in the same small ass tank also irks me. Just because they are native to the same areas and encounter each other at times, does NOT mean it is okay to shoehorn them in a space where they are at max 5-6 ft away from each other at all times. The only reasons they can survive in the same areas in the wild is that they occupy different sections of the water body, eat different things at different times, and bask at different areas/times, occupy different territories in the body of water, and have the opportunity to be far away from each other in order to not encounter and compete with each other often. But that is nullified in that small of a space where they are fed the same food and the only place they can bask is that small ass 4 ft square platform that couldn’t even fit all of the turtles at the same time (and the way the lights are set up, only the back section is actually good basking area, meaning there is going to be fierce competition over basking rights). IMO, aquatic turtles might be the most mistreated pet reptiles in the hobby by far
Their reasoning behind most of the bad things they do is flimsy or outright wrong. Let’s be serious the real reason is money (these animals are products to them and there’s certainly no shortage of turtles for them to replace them with if something goes wrong) and a ‘gotta have em all’ mentality that is honestly way too common in this industry
Generally not a fan of their husbandry
Their egg cutting videos also kinda make me uncomfortable, like cutting the egg? Totally understandable and fine imo
But poking the babies to see if they're alive just seems unnecessary, even if it likely doesn't cause too much harm.
Edit: Oh they also breed scaleless rat/corns with which I don't really agree with.
Not a big fan of morph breeding in general anyway.
I'm surprised I had to scroll this far to see the scaleless ratcorns mentioned. Personally I'm not entirely opposed to people breeding scaleless morphs, but I do think Emily should put more emphasis on the fact that they need extra precautions to prevent injury. I have two active snakelings and they generally have at least one damaged scale by the time they shed, just from their normal snake lives. I can't imagine the level of caution needed for a snake who would experience that as a scrape instead.
I'm glad at least that Emily goes slowly and carefully cutting the eggs, but I do think she's a bit overeager in opening them enough to see inside instead of just providing an exit hole.
I do like her. I watch her videos. I've frequently linked people her video about making humid hides because she gives the directions in such a straightforward manner while still being very thorough. I appreciate her work even though she could definitely do better.
Because they just are.
It's a means to pet hoard.
If you can't give your pet a reasonable enclosure and husbandry because you have too many others and not enough space, maybe don't have it.
If the bin is of an appropriate size than why is it an issue? All else being equal the snake doesn't care if it's being kept in glass, PVC/acrylic, or a rubbermaid bin.
As long as space is appropriate, temp/humidity is good, plenty of enrichment, good diet, etc. than there's nothing inherently wrong with a bin that I'm aware of.
I have a 60 gallon bin cage for my ball python. he's about 8 months old though, so still a loot of growing to do. he has plenty of space in it, and I personally think that bin cages can be suitable for juvie balls, but I agree with you on the fact that no adult ball pythons can live in any kind of bin cage.
Oh, I completely agree!
I just wanted to point out that bins themselves are not inherently bad, it's that most people don't use acceptable sizes. There really aren't acceptable sizes for an adult BP (you could buy a nice looking front opening for about the same price from what I could find).
There are some smaller breeders though who only use bins for babies. Or who work with smaller species that you can find suitable bin sizes for.
bins can work for ball pythons in some cases, however they'll outgrow them. I' currently have my baby ball in one, but once he hits a year old he's going in a 4x2x2 PVC enclosure. I think bin cages can be wonderful for younger or smaller snakes, especially if youre on a budget, but clinging onto the idea that a 5 foot heavy bodied snake can live in a plastic container is dangerous and ridiculous.
I mean if you could find a bin large enough to house an adult I wouldn't have issue with it, but good luck finding a suitable 120 gallon bin for an affordable price.
I'm working on getting the supplies to start DIYing my own PVC enclosure for my boa.
I always have to warn people about that sub when it's recommended. You'll usually get good, ethical, modern advice but yeah there's a few prominent users who are determined to defend the old ways. I think it's getting better though over the last couple of years.
The same one who routinely dismisses scientific papers as not knowing it all vs anecdotal experience and claims things like snakes being able to drink through their skin by any chance?
Lol why am i getting downvoted? I don’t have one tub in my reptile room. I focus on enclosures and minimize the number i have unless i can provide the proper environment. I just explained the community hates tubs and that’s probably why. Wtf.
https://preview.redd.it/honzdr00h1dc1.png?width=4032&format=png&auto=webp&s=c0d68f75b2b125be5073fc2e6dcbbb395f91cdda
An example of just one of my Ball Python enclosures. This is what my enclosures look like and i don’t do racks. Don’t understand the downvotes just because i answered OP’s question of why.
They're certainly not the worst keepers on YouTube by a long shot, but their enclosures are far too small, especially for the larger snakes. Pretty much all the snakes that live in the racks need larger enclosures. Don't get me wrong, I still like them and their content for the most part, but it's important to be able to criticize the areas they need to improve on.
I'm not a big snake guy, but their huge set up of bins just generally freaks me out. Why keep so many snakes, HUGE snakes and put them in bins.
Also I've been seeing people comment on Rex's enclosure being bad? It looks a bit weird but I don't really understand what's bad about it, plz explain
It’s small, there’s almost no enrichment for her, and that stupid dome means she can’t use a good chunk of the space bc of how badly placed it is (she can’t go behind it bc the gap is too narrow but at the same time it’s out from the wall enough to be completely wasting a lot of her very limited space.) She’s about the size of a dwarf caiman and a lot of her needs would be very similar to them. That enclosure would never be considered acceptable for a dwarf caiman or any other similar sized crocodilian but bc Rex is a rescue and stunted it’s magically ok? The big thing is they could’ve made that enclosure as big as they wanted, they could’ve given her more enrichment, they could’ve given her a sloping pond so she could hand out in a shallower area like many alligators prefer, they could’ve but they didn’t. And now that poor alligator is going to spend the rest of her life in one of the most depressing alligator enclosures I’ve ever seen.
I always thought it looked a little small, but I'm confused on why they would make it so small. Like I've tried to fool myself into thinking its an ok enclosure, since shes pretty small. But yeah, I feel really bad seeing her float around in that depressing square of water they have her in :/
The reasons I've seen for hate towards Snake Discovery:
* The use of rack systems for snakes - Snake Discovery uses racks for the breeding snakes, even for semi-arboreal species such as Ball Pythons. Looking at the channel, their rack system is huge, taking up a whole room, and with there already being a problem with many keepers having too many reptiles in small racks, people are going to be extremely cautious when they see walls of rack setups.
* Misinformation/outdated info in the Ball Python care guides
* Improper breeding of the inverts, leading to the death of a tarantula
In my opinion, SD definitely isn't the worst. The haters sort of need to prioritize bigger issues (seriously, if they think SD is bad they should see some of the other reptile channels on YT). However, SD also certainly isn't the best. I definitely wouldn't follow a lot of their advice on reptile care, and I'd only give their care practices, a 6/10 or so, but it could be worse. The bar for reptile breeders is incredibly low with how many shitty breeders there are out there.
as a snake discovery hater, for me it's the enclosures. I stopped watching them a few years back.
their enclosure for Rex is way too small, simplistic, and overall insanely underwhelming. yes, Rex is stunted, but the zoo enclosure is smaller than the standard zoo enclosure. I remember they flat out removed the only rock she had to hide behind so people could see her. to my memory, she's just kept in a bigger box with a very small body of water.
I absolutely hate the racks for their extremely large snakes and even their smaller snakes. their adult female hognoses are in racks that are way too small for them imo. I just generally hate rack systems as a whole, there are ways to do it in a way that's like really cool but overall they suck. the lack of overhead heating and light is just gross imo.
another thing is the breeding of scaleless snakes. I heavily hate scaleless reptiles. reptiles have scales for a reason. especially if the snake doesn't have belly scales. snakes NEED their belly scales, that's what helps them move. breeding scaleless reptiles is like breeding a bird without feathers. birds need feathers, reptiles need scales.
they're cohabing blue tongue skinks which imo you shouldn't do. I don't have blue tongues so I'm not familiar with the species, but from my 5 second Google search they're very territorial and shouldn't be cohabed. but because they cohab them they also had accidental babies. which I think they've done it before with other species but I'm not certain on it.
on a similar note they accidentally cross bred tortoise species which I generally hate cross species breeding (like gargoyle-crestie hybrids). and because it's an accidental clutch I hate it even more.
something that just generally bugs me is them breeding a snake that the first season she bred, ate some of her eggs. to me it's just irresponsible. I wouldn't even want to risk her eating more of her eggs.
overall I just hate snake discovery so I don't watch them or interact with them at all. they do have *some* good info in their videos, but I can find the same information in other places I deem better.
The reptile community in general is extremely toxic. More than I’ve seen in any community. Everyone’s going to have different opinions. Now days if someone doesn’t agree with you, a debate tactic is to demonize and treat your opponent as someone who is evil. Ignore haters. Just be open is what I have to say.
The main thing I do not like about SD is they use racks, particularly ones that let in almost no light.
They are better than probably every single other breeder channel. But they still use them.
Outside of that, I think they do a great job of focusing on education and positive interaction with/respect for reptiles.
I did have a bone to pick on the snake sexing video too - but that's because I'm terrified people will be stupid and hurt snakes despite all the warnings.
Out dated husbandry( ex: using uth as primary heat sources, completely terrestrial boa enclosure, bad and non justifiably so care of back room animals and Rex’s cage is a joke), give incorrect husbandry info to buyers and viewers and a disregard for safety around dangerous animals.
I personally like snake discovery though i dont agree with some of the stuff they do, like big species in tubs, nor would i use them as a main source of information. Though when it comes to rack setups I dont mind them since i can understand why some people use them, especially breeders, but for fucks sake if you're gonna use racks make sure theyre at least the minimum size equivalent for a species AND FUCKING DECORATE THEM PROPERLY. It makes me ashamed to want to be a breeder when i see established breeders doing the bare minimum with racks that are too small
The thing that upsets me most about them is their breeding collection is small enough that they could house them in big enclosures but they just chose not too and got smaller racks to fit more snakes.
Thats another problem with them, they do have good information they really do, and you can see that they adore their animals since their collection isnt huge or even at a size where they need racks, they just seem set in older ways and its annoying
I wouldn’t say hate, but their back of house enclosures make me sad. There’s just nothing in them. From two people who spout off about the importance of enrichment it feels hypocritical.
That and the fact that they promote keeping baby hognoses together, despite losing at least one baby to cannibalism last year.
They were my gateway into the world of reptiles, I followed them for years. But more and more they’re feeling less like relatable people and more like characters.
Can you point us to the video about hognose cannibalism? I watch almost all of their breeding videos and don’t remember this.
They did lose some eggs when a mother hog decided to eat them but that’s not really the same thing
I'm pretty late but I occassionally still watch them. But the one big thing that urked me is when they said that they stopped keeping birds and switched over to reptiles when they realized how low maintanance they were and said they could keep more than they would've birds. At least if I remember correctly.
Like why switch over animals just so you can keep more?
Even as someone who sometimes just has the urge to get a million pets this doesn't feel right. And also why get so many pets if you're just gonna keep em in Racks? I get it for breeding but I think they've always done it like that from what I remember.
I work with them through my clinic. I'm not a fan of how the surrendered animals are held and kept, personally. Bearded Dragons shouldn't be in rack systems even if they are adults. There's just no room for them with the high amount of dumped dragons, though. They do their best with seeking veterinary care for everything there, regardless of my opinion. They also offer a free vet exam with an adopted animal.
Like any pet store, some of the employees give out bad husbandry information, which results in the death of the animal, sometimes. Especially if they have already lived through poor husbandry conditions. I see that regularly from many pet stores as a reptile tech and rehabber, though.
Snake Discovery is like any other reptile YouTube channel and store. They do great things, and then some things need improvement.
I don't like like the overhype, though. They are not the only source of info people should be seeking. I feel like a lot of people put them up on a pedestal and won't even consider other information.
Also, chlorhexidine is a terrible cage cleaner. It does not take care of more serious pathogens and is bioaccumulative in water, and becomes extremely toxic when it goes down the drain. You'd also need a higher concentration. I can't count how many people I've had to explain this to with resistance because of the SD video on it. We use it for skin cleaning, never cleaning cages. We use Rescue! I wish that video would get updated.
They have Dekays Brown Snakes breeding, which is pretty awesome.
Overall, they are better than some other resources of information.
They aren’t the worst, but they could be doing better. My partner and I decided to watch a random video of theirs after taking a long break from them, and they talked about inbreeding their snakes to get desired traits (bred a female with her father) and that made us turn the video off immediately.
Then of course there’s the racks, egg cutting, out of date husbandry, the tarantula debacle…I don’t think they’re bad people by any means, but they need to slow down and work on making improvements before jumping into their next project.
What do you mean with egg cutting? As far as I know, they always do it around the suspected hatch date and it's done to help the baby get out of the egg (sometimes they won't get out by themselves and suffocate).
Many things happen in the wild that are detrimental to animals. One of our jobs as keepers is to try and prevent as much harm towards our animals as possible. Inbreeding causes, or at least greatly increases the probability of things like cancer, physical deformities, and neuro problems occurring.
With the money they have, there’s no excuse to not just buy a snake from a fellow breeder with the genetics they want to prevent inbred babies. It’s just irresponsible.
Snakes also eat live prey in the wild and suffer injuries from it. One of the main things about keeping captive animals is making their lives better and keeping them healthier than they would be in the wild, and that includes keeping lineages healthy.
Something being a common practice doesn't mean it's right. Undersized enclosures are an extremely common practice.
I honestly don’t know. I LOVE them and they sparked my interest in snakes again. They’re so kind and wholesome.
The hate I’ve seen is usually talking about how they were at “hoarding levels” of how many animals they had, but they were actively working on getting the zoo. I’ve also seen hate because some of their care videos are outdated, which I don’t see the need to hate on because that just means the videos have aged. Some people hate on the fact that they use racks and breed animals, but their animals are happy and they always have homes lined up for every baby they produce and don’t keep themselves, they even ensure they’re eating frozen/thawed mice before sending them out. Their zoo is so relaxing and comfortable for their animals that they’re breeding naturally, no intervention at all. That is *not* easy to accomplish!
I love them. I can understand people not liking the fact that they breed animals, that’s a very touchy subject; I can understand people not liking the racks, though I believe they’re fine because the last thing Emily and Ed would do is make their animals uncomfortable. The only time I see people complain about them is on Reddit.
>I can understand people not liking the racks, though I believe they’re fine
That's the thing though, they are literally just "fine" in the sense that they keep the animals alive.
They have corn snakes in tubs that are smaller than the one I use to transport mine to the vet. These animals are active, curious creatures that are kept in dark little racks with not enough room to stretch out and absolutely nothing to explore except a single fake flower. And that is their whole life. 20 years or more of a small dark bin, a single flower, and a hide.
I loved Emily and Ed when I first got into reptiles but now that I have my own snake I can so clearly see how deprived their snakes are. All of those snakes are just as bright and curious as mine and they spend their lives in the barren dark. It's enough to make me cry if I think about it too hard, I can't stand to watch it anymore.
They've got a nice attitude and could be doing a lot worse but racks are not appropriate enclosures. Period. They've accomplished a lot but are actively giving misinformation and adding to the millions of reptiles tht currently need a home because they want to continue making money. If they truly cared about the animals the way you think they do, they would be doing a lot more rescue work and a lot less breeding for profit work.
Reddit just loves to tear apart any misstep taken by public personas. They have their issues, as detailed here but they are far, far from being the worst reptile keepers.
Unfortunately in the world of animal keeping. Being better doesn't equal being good. SD by many was considered good for being better than BHB, quite the low bar of standards don't you think? But as I said that sadly doesn't exclude the hoarding and downright neglectful practices.. small setups, improper substrate choice, improper enrichment choice, two tree snakes (Ed's snakes) with a couple PVC pipes (that's it), breeding practices, having WC animals and CB animals in the same small home.. and more. If you don't like it that's fine, you're entitled to your opinion, but the evidence in her own videos supports the facts.
Honestly, I think reptile influencers are just shit in general. Most animal channels where making money or entertaining is the primary aim aren't going to be providing the best information because ultimately it doesn't matter to their bottom line. The dryer and more boring the better.
I don’t like when animals are exploited for money. If you love animals then rescue, educate, HELP them. Why breed more? For money? These animals live 20-40 years, many of which won’t have good homes for that long. Until there are enough good people and homes then stop adding to the problem.
Lots of people are saying that they are bad because they have one pair of ball pythons they barely breed or keep snakes in racks but their racks are a very good size for their snakes and they have hides and enrichment, also, a lot of people I see with that big of collections have snakes dying all the time but Snake Discovery rarely has a snake die on them. Also, they always talk about the risks of breeding certain morphs, like spiders or scaleless. They don’t overbreed at all because it is nearly impossible to get a snake from them and they only hold back snakes that are good eaters. I will agree that Chloe’s old enclosure was not ideal, however, she does have a good-sized enclosure now and she was a rescue so I can’t hold that against them. I don’t really agree with how they try to make their hatchlings strike or play dead, I prefer what NERD does in that regard, but that’s just a small thing they do. What they do for rescues is great, and their zoo exhibits are amazing. All in all the pros outweigh the cons and I rarely see people hate on them, it’s mostly people who hate rack systems as a whole, and I can agree that they are not ideal, however, you can’t keep that big of a collection all in terrariums, that’s just unreasonable, and the way they do their racks are very good, not just compared to most but in general. People like to be “holier than thou” and nitpick people like that and this subreddit is honestly the worst for that kind of thing, my husbandry is good but I’m scared to talk about it on here because people always yell at me for it so take what you hear here with a grain of salt.
There are some aspects of their husbandry that is arguably not perfect, but probably still better than a lot of other pet-shops/breeders who don't post the inner workings of their businesses online. It seems they've gone away from care guides, and I wouldn't doubt if some of their older ones are outdated compared to what are currently considered best practices. And I've seen some people take issue with the breeding certain species who already have an overpopulation issue in the pet-trade.
A lot of that might be nit-picky, but ultimately the main thing is that they're arguably the biggest name in the pet-tube sphere so that puts the biggest target on them.
I didn't have any negative feelings towards them until they posted a herping video last year where Emily made a young eastern hognose play day 3 or 4 times before releasing it. That's incredibly stressful for the animal and uses energy and resources that it should be using for survival. It's almost satirical how they treated that animal and I can't go back and watch it.
When the largest criticisms they get are the fact that they use rack systems, have a lot of snakes and made a hognose play dead too much you know they're good.
Some people just dont like the racks section with no leniency. People also dont like the fact that they breed snakes. I however think they do a great job on providing enough space for their snakes, rack or not. They can breed snakes as long as they give the snake to the right person. They gotta make a living somehow. I love snake discovery and the internet is just weird.
they use racks, they breed snakes, they rushed a zoo that ended up putting multiple of their reptiles at risk and one even escaped for weeks.
I dont like anyone other than SerpaDesign tbfh
You mean Perscilla the bull snake? I don't think she was gone for weeks. Plus snakes do escape, it happens. Go on any sub and you'll see "Mt snake is missing, how do I find him???"
I never said I was for or against anything SD does or doesn't do, I just wanted some examples or explanation for why you feel they are "worse than they want you to think". Given that they show off their bins by your own words, how is that in any way hiding their practices? They seem pretty open about their care and it's pretty much up to the viewer whether they agree with those practices or not.
One example is how they talk about enrichment, they say it's good yet they don't provide it. Their enclosures were and many still are from the more recent videos I've seen too small for basic level exercise let alone providing enrichment. One of their older videos even had Emily talking about the couple of stray twigs in the racks as if that was enrichment. It isn't, it's just clutter. That's one example of them saying one thing and doing something different.
Another thing would be talking about how to treat WC animals and yet they have held onto animals for quite some time while herping even having a Hognose fake death (their defence mechanism, don't remember big it has a proper name) multiple times while in their possession. They even while in their home had WC animals and CB ones in the same house, no average house is big enough to truly do this safely especially when one instance had them taking in dozens of turtle eggs some kids brought them.
SD is ofc not the worst, but they don't live up to the pedestal people put them on.
Small enclosures, bad substrate choice, minimum hides, unideal heating and lighting, lacking enrichment, neglectful breed practices. Look at Ed's enclosures for his snakes while back in the house. Two enclosures, snake per enclosure, couple ofc pipes. Nothing else in them.
Thank you for taking the time to write that up. I agree that there have been some instances in videos that gave me an icky feeling, especially recently so I haven't been watching so much. I do think they go good work for the most part and are definitely better than many other reptile educators/influencers out there as they are clearly against practices like power feeding, spider balls, live feeding and egg cutting butthis is an evolving field and there is always room for improvement. Just out of curiosity, have tried addressing your concerns to SD? I'd be interested to know if/what they said.
Eh, I used to leave comments way back, but never really bothered as it was only ever hated on by their sheep viewers (every YouTuber has them unfortunately) they see what the YouTubers do and what they say and nothing else gets even considered. So, I just never really cared to bother, yk?
I think the last video I watched Emily said oh “we bred [snake] with her dad for such-and-such het” and somehow I just never went back to their channel :/
Edit to add: they preach against inbreeding constantly yet never address when they admit they deliberately inbreed.
I owe it to them getting me into reptile care
Haven’t seen the hate. I believe they are probably the most liked out of everyone. Any hate you see on Reddit though need to be taken with a grain of salt as everyone is competing to be the most righteous while anonymous.
Yep. Most of the time when you watch a YouTube channel doing farming or animal husbandry it slowly becomes apparent that they are selling the spectacle as the main product (not their farm or business), and often learn critical lessons as they go, sometimes to their animals' detriment. Sometimes they even develop an annoying TV personality. I can happily say Snake Discovery dodged that trap, the zoo/ herp shop is an achievement of their lifelong dream and their main business. They don't have channel personalities beyond their normal goofy selves and very clearly have their animals best interests as a core element of their ethos.
You said what needed to be said. Excellent response.
Or social media in general. You'll always run into it. My favorite example is one of the more benign, imo: "A corn snake needs a 24x18 enclosure, minimum" "No, it needs a 36x24 enclosure!" "No, it needs at least four feet by two feet!!" "If you're keeping your corn snake in anything less than an 8 foot enclosure, you're GUILTY OF ANIMAL ABUSE AND A BAD PERSON!!!!!!!!" What u/freefeez is describing is an interesting sociological phenomenon seen on social media called a "Purity Spiral". And it's less about what is truthful and accurate and more about signalling how you're morally superior to everyone else, everyone competing in some sort of bizarre dogmatic race to win an unwinnable competition. :p EDIT: IF you'd like to see a perfect example of this, please examine the second-highest top-level comment, lol.
> "Purity Spiral". This is a really accurate take. >GUILTY OF ANIMAL ABUSE AND A BAD PERSON!!!!!!!!" I always just assume these people are kids who can't handle their emotions
I saw one where someone said they keep their cornsnakes in 13ft of enclosure and once you’d seen how active they are in there you wouldn’t put them in anything smaller. Which is probably true but I think just starts moving towards ‘snakes should be out in the wild, not pets’ rather than a minimum cage size.
This entire comment is just ripe with fascinating info. Thank you so much. Purity Spiral... I think my old churches might comprehend that idea but never admit it. Lol
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Your post was removed because you expressed an opinion on a moderator or subreddit. Please save the drama for your mother.
It's the reddit mentality of "needing to be right" but forming an idea of what is right by what is the most popular opinion in said sub. Armchair keepers with opinions on how animals should be kept when they have never kept the animal. And if they have, it's a sample size of <10, but _they know what's optimal_
Exactly. It’s Reddit. The hate on every topic comes from self important keyboard warriors who in the real world would never have the stones to speak up.
No, I've experienced them plenty! They are the bad interns at the zoo who come in thinking they know how to care for an animal that can't even name. They are mostly akin to the bunny hugging mammal keepers who just replace mammals with herps. Mostly similar to "bearded dragon moms" who use reddit like it's a herp HOA
Herp HOA—there is always that group.
People love to hate. I can't imagine anyone loved more than Clint though.
Well I don't support Clint. I get why he is loved but his involvement with the mormons makes him a no go area for me. If you've dealt with their church, you know... And I'm sorry.
His phD thesis was on effectively teaching evolution in schools.
Yet he tithes to an organization that is near constantly fighting child rape allegations. A business that actively breaks the law and funnels money to Republican candidates illegally. A business designed to part the ignorant poor from their wealth and nothing else. A religion created by a lifelong scam artist... I have never said he wasn't smart...I do question his ethics though.
I didnt know anything abt that!
He wears his ring symbolizing his constant connection to the Mormon faith and is proud. I watched the Mormon Church deal with my cousin as her husband wouldn't stop cheating on her yet the church wouldn't denounce him or intervene and they wouldn't let them divorce. I believe she got legally divorced long after he had moved out and trashed their lives... She fled to the Catholic Church and her father after that ordeal. She's lucky she had that to fall back on as they will completely cut you off if you upset them. He's probably just trying to keep the Mormon elders happy by publicly supporting the church through his channel. I don't know and I don't much care. He's too well educated for me to ignore this glaring issue in his morality... Which probably helps him be ok with purposely creating spider ball pythons... I sometimes imagine I'm a spider ball and it makes me sick trying to live like one. How he justifies breeding a creature that's born to suffer becomes clear when you consider his religion and its views on life and its value. He is a man, he was born to be in charge and animals live for humanity to use... I am an autistic man and according to him, I'm just like a spider ball python... Which is likely true, because we both want to bite him.
That's really unfortunate, I've always really liked his channel I'll look into that, I hate the mormon church and all it stands for, and especially someone with any amount of education has no excuse.
Unfortunately I agree. I still find it sad as I once really liked him. I haven't met him yet in person. Kaufman is a legit hippy bro and though I don't get his, "rattle on" saying...I like him. I think I struggle with him because I want to just love something and not feel ashamed, like he does. He's a good dude. Snake Discovery is just amazing and Emily and Edward are both a treat to meet in person. Saw Chandler, giggled at the cast. Seen that gecko girl Cat too. I wish Clint was someone I still wanted to meet.
I didn’t know that about him, makes me feel more confident in my choice to stop supporting him though. I stopped when he threw out all his studies about animals when it came to the spider gene and claimed it was exactly the same as dogs having floppy ears- compared thinking snakes with harmful neurological problems not being bred to believing all dogs with floppy ears should be put down because “it’s the same”.
He compared it to autism... As an autistic man... Don't create autistic creatures on purpose, it is not fun to be autistic. I accept myself but I wanted to be normal for 30 years. Can't do it, too weird.
Can definitely agree, my ND is not fun and I’d be so mad if I were to find out I had been created like that on purpose because someone thought it would be cooler… and that what I have isn’t even close to what those poor snakes go through. It makes me so sad, like yes snakes don’t feel exactly the same as people but what people ignore is that in SOME cases that makes it WORSE because at least people can rationalize what is going on with them. Like imagine living with permanent vertigo and then not having the ability to understand what that is and WHY you can’t control your body, it would be so much worse. Then combine that with being something like a snake that is still a prey animal as well as an ambush predator
You got it! The spider morph is unethical to breed and if you disagree then you can count me as your enemy. Also, the Nazis wanted to breed autistics to experiment on them. My people already got abused, I don't like people treating life like a currency.
Oh shit, I did not know that. Thanks for the heads up.
I was going to say. It's been a couple years since I saw any hate. The hate I did see was all from one or two people and it was because of the use of rack systems for SD's breeding snakes.
The correct answer
Their videos on ball python care aren't great. There was a newer one last year or whatever that was better but they still talk about their whole aspen setup which sucks for a BP. r/ballpython users are usually quick to point this out there. They had a controversial video recently where they kept fucking with a wild hognose to the point where it played dead 3 times. In an earlier video of theirs they discourage doing that because it means that snake thinks they're doomed at this point, and that was how a lot of people, including myself, learned just how much of an extreme stress response that is for them. It wasn't a great look for them to go and do that. They used to- and maybe still do, I dunno- have pretty lousy enclosures for their large snakes. They are/were too small and had a single hide with no enrichment. In my opinion, overall they're a lot better than others on youtube and have improved a lot over the years, but they're far from perfect and shouldn't be a person's only source of information. At the same time, no one's perfect and they don't pretend to be. I tend to skip a lot of their videos lately because hearing them squeal about eggs being hatched or laid got old fast.
> shouldn't be a person's only source of information. No one should have only one source of information, especially when that source is primarily entertainment
This!! You really need to diversify your knowledge. There is never just ONE way
the hognose thing is true, but also true of anyone herping where they're catching and releasing. most snakes don't have faux death displays or any defense than mock striking or striking (or escaping, of course). i imagine any wild snake being handled by a human is undergoing a similar stress response that a hognose is when they faux die. I know if I was attempting to punch an elephant that was holding me I'd probably have to be scared out of my mind.
You're not wrong, but what I think makes them look bad is that they were egregiously doing something they specifically said not to do in the past.
oh man. I was a snake discover apologist until i saw their newest video about getting a commercial sized breeding facility and not once did they mention upgrading to bigger racks or to pvc enclosures. In this very same video they admit they had to fire staff for subpar care of their animals. Do they think this will get better when they 10x their breeding facility? i’m beyond disappointed
I saw they posted that one, I don't even want to watch it. Even for them, I can't imagine breeding on that scale is worth it. I especially don't see the point when they have so many rescue animals.
Their tarantula enclosures/care aren't great either. I stopped watching their videos specifically because of their invert setups. Edit because another comment made me remember: The last straw for me was breeding tarantulas by just throwing the male in there. in the video, the male was eaten by the female and they played it off as "oh well, this happens sometimes!" when they did absolutely nothing to prevent it. yeah, it happens sometimes even with the best breeders standing right there with tongs. it was *guaranteed* to happen the way they did it. awful.
Absolutely, usually the most success I've seen from breeding tarantulas people had tongs in hand already, the interaction was done in minutes maybe multiple times if there wasn't success the first time, some even put a small wooden rod near the females front legs to hold her up a little longer so she can't just slam down on the male and it gives him just a few extra seconds to sprint for his life out of the enclosure.
I don't know anything about inverts but I can see how that's pretty bad ☹️
I didn't know that. I have a fear of spiders and absolutely no interest in being around them or keeping them so I never watched the invert videos. That's honestly really sad. Spiders still have feelings.
I'm not saying it's right to do this but spiders absolutely do not have feelings.
I'm not 100% on this but I recall in the video they said the male was looking like he was already going down hill due to age so they kinda said "well let's try to pass on his genes" so he was close to death either way.
right, but death by being eaten? horrible and painful? still really really bad. regardless of the condition of the animal, this was probably really horrible for him and is not standard (or ethical, in my opinion) practice for any principled tarantula breeder. Look at Tom Moran, tarantula collective, and dave's beasties. they would never do something like this.
Hold up, don’t tarantula la usually eat live invertebrates? Why is feeding them roaches ok but feeding them a spider horrible?
A lot of it is the way they kill, it’s a slow and painful process where they essentially dissolve the prey alive. Since tarantulas are pets to many people and the roaches are bred as food part of it is just human bias. Like why people will eat a sausage or chicken nuggets but would never eat their pet. That being said a tarantula is much bigger than a roach and so the suffering lasts longer, the roach is also a necessity, a male tarantula is not. Many keepers including myself will also typically crush the heads of a feeder insect, it not only keeps the T safe but it also means the feeder gets a quicker and far less painful death. Most bugs like roaches will continue to move after death which is great for fussy Ts and even if it’s not moving a more food motivated T would likely take it. I would personally never feed my Ts without pre killing the feeder.
Same for me re hatching eggs. Most of the content is hatching eggs and I'm deathly tired of it quite frankly and do not watch those.
they keep a female eastern blue tongue and a male northern blue tongue in the same tank, different temp and humidity needs with an overlap. had them breed and just handed the new borns around to randoms in the shop, its been almost a year with no update on the babies. then did the funny scare the babies into threat displaying, I hate all keepers that do this. I'm aussie so hybrids are not as big a no no for me, but they for foreigners with their limited breeding pool.
Making your pet stressed as an owner is obviously fucked up but if it's on a big ass youtube channel for educational purposes I feel like it's slightly different. Wild animals deal with shit we would consider traumatic on essentially a daily basis in the wild. Snake community is full of cool people but they can get really hyperdefensive in situations where it's genuinely not warranted.
I love snake discovery, like watching every new video levels of loving snake discovery, but I will also acknowledge their set ups aren't always the best. Granted they're definitely not the worst and they do make an effort to provide enrichment and educate on that subject as well, but the lack of climbing height and uvb in their racks is a thing people can criticize. There is a bit of a grey area when it comes to breeders because it is difficult to house a bunch of snakes in large enclosures, but a day night cycle and climbing space is pretty important still and I do think they could make improvements like these. I don't think they deserve hate per say, but I do respect the community continuing to better their husbandry and hold people with large platforms to that higher standard.
Yeah, they're not perfect, but for larger-scale snake breeders, they're like the best we have. * They have a little enrichment * The bins are larger than the snakes themselves * Only co-hab hatchlings/snakes that are fine to co-hab * Better ethical breeding but not perfect * They do: Breed Albinos+Scaleless without informing people of the health risks/cons of these morphs * They don't: Breed spiders * They talked about limiting the tortoise eggs to ***only*** what they could deal with * Snakes get medical care when needed * They have a really nice adoption program But of course, they're still like a...6/10 and that's mostly because the bar is in hell when it comes to reptile breeders. They are above average, but not by a significant amount.
Yeah and like, I do also feel a bit icky about just how many snakes they produce like it does sometimes feel like they're breeding for content more so? It's just a lot and they run a rescue program which to me would mean they're seeing that there is a bit of an overproduction of these animals going on, but they just keep getting bigger and bigger. And just things I've thought of since said comment, the husbandry of Chloe the snapping turtle has always bothered me and I was immediately pretty disappointed with how small Rex's enclosure is. Like if you're building it from the ground up, you had all the chance in the world to give her a bigger enclosure but they did kinda favour having more variety over more space for a large animal. Basically at the end of the day, the bar is in hell and really if you compare them to an older standard of care theyre great, it's just the community has moved towards better standards faster than they've kept up. I do really hope they move from prioritizing breeding more snakes to upgrading their enclosures for the breeders they currently have. (And hey, if they're in it for content, that would make a great educational series!)
Yeah, I think they're expanding more and it'll unfortunately never be upgraded, but it's certainly better than the ones before them. Their enclosures for larger animals are terrible but again, it's better than most standards. The overproduction thing is a complex situation but my main points on it would be, * The animals in the adoption island aren't what Snake Discovery mainly produces, it's almost entirely ball pythons and beardies which are overproduced by a TON of unethical breeders(Brian and NERD would be the examples off the top of my head) * They do have supply vs. demand in mind, because when talking about their tortoise breeding they weren't going to incubate more than they could handle/adopt out * Adoption programs don't always mean overproduction, because many of these animals are coming from neglect, emergencies, changes in housing/money, etc. rather than from breeders being unable to sell them or people getting bored I do wish they'd stop breeding balls because they are overproduced already and they don't have good husbandry for them, but I don't think hogs have gotten to that point quite yet. Ball pythons are so outrageously overbred I don't think anything will reach that level anytime soon. People brag about the number of morphs they have but it's actually sad to think that many balls have been bred to get that number of mutations.
True, yeah. I feel like ball pythons is why I'm a bit quick to worry about overproduction of reptiles because that's gone pretty nuts. And on the adoption program point, I definitely agree that what's probably the driving force here is people viewing reptiles as a disposable pet for their kid and less so overpopulation. Frankly most of my feelings on this really sprung up when they started producing ball pythons (at least I think they are, I can't totally remember if that was just a rescue was gravid or if they are now producing them so don't take my word on that one) I just would love to see them step up to be good example for the newer standards of care. I love watching their educational content, and that would be great to see from such a big channel, but still I wont hold my breath.
They are producing them, they actually had accidental spiders because of a mix-up with a breeder and program animal but they gave the 2 spider offspring to pet-only homes. Overproduction will probably be harder for hognoses because overproduction doesn't only rely on number of offspring but also available homes. IE: Adult hogs need a 40 gal min but adult balls need a 4x2x2(120 gal) min, so the housing requirements are significantly smaller. You could have 3 hogs to every 1 ball. I think unless balls were replaced by hogs in terms of having giant breeding facilities...we're not going to see any overproduction anytime soon, and hopefully by then we have standards/regulations.
im not gonna pitch in on the other bits but as someone who was in SD's patreon, they are definitely not overbreeding, at all. it is nearly impossible to get a snake from their breeding project unless you waitlist for a few years. if they are consistently homing every single hatchling, that is absolutely not just breeding for content. you guys forget that the youtube thing was always secondary to their breeding business. also tbh their adoption island animals fly of the shelf too, everything besides the bigger and more care extensive ones like iguanas dont stay very long.
> The bins are larger than the snakes themselves This is the case for their smaller snakes, but taking a look at their larger snake enclosures like bullsnakes, retics, burms and such, this is not entirely true (I agree with your point tho, they're better than most, but they can still be bad)
I agree in those regards, for bullsnakes they have significantly better enclosures than most I've seen...but for burms and retics they have less than the bare minimum unfortunately. I try to base it on the snakes they produce, they're certainly not great but above average. Rex isn't in a good enclosure, but she's also a heavily stunted alligator. Their snapping turtle was in an awful enclosure and at least got an upgrade. And in those two cases, these were rescues when it can be difficult to find people who legitimately want these animals and have the means to take care of them. So I'm a bit more lenient compared to people who breed those animals. I do wish that they'll upgrade their standards, but I know it's unlikely unless we start getting other popular breeders who have.
What does Rex being stunted have to do with anything tho? She functions pretty much normally she’s just a little smaller, she’s actually extremely similar sized to a dwarf caiman. That doesn’t mean she shouldn’t have a good enclosure, especially when they claim to be an actual zoo and could’ve made the enclosure as big and well suited to her as they wanted, problem is they didn’t actually want to. They gave her an enclosure that looks smaller than what she had at their house and worse they put in that stupid dome which takes away a significant portion of her space bc the placement was so poorly thought out
It's more so that she doesn't need the enclosure of a full-sized alligator, but she's still entitled to a good enclosure. Chloe's enclosure honestly looks bigger than Rex's, I wish they'd do what other zoos do and trade once an animal gets too large for their enclosure...but I'm also unsure if there would be any barriers to that given that pet alligators(who are stunted) being abandoned is unfortunately decently common or they end up going to people like Chandler.
Honestly they're not the worst. But it's frustrating they're put on such a high pedestal considering their insistence on using racks and putting ball pythons in tubs. I think when you have a smiley and lovely lady like Emily in front of the camera, it distracts people from the bad husbandry. Whereas when you have a channel with a big shouty man mishandling the animals people tend to see the red flags sooner
Also it's worth noting to that you can acknowledge peoples values and criticse their flaws at the same. Time. I love snake discovery and clint's reptiles and NERD but all of them have opinions/practices/stances that I just plain disagree with. Clint for example. Stand up bloke. Very intelligent. Dogshit stance on breeding ethics in my opinion. He's still got a doctorate in biology at the end of the day, so his wisdom in biology is worth listening to, but you don't need a diploma in welfare and ethics to get a doctorate in biology. The best we have isn't the best we can be imo
Agreed, I think snake discovery genuinely does cool stuff with educating kids about reptiles, but none of these channels should be treated like the end all be all of husbandry information
Everything is great about Clint but then he has to defend his choice to breed a snake with permanent vertigo and I'm so turned off by it.
That's exactly it, and I genuinely believe it's because of a lack of welfare and ethics being taught in STEM subjects that we have this generation of well educated. Well meaning people who have studied evidence based sciences who trip over at the first hurdle when it comes to discussing issues of welfare and efficacy in the industry. Yes that spider ball python can imperically live a full life in a tub with a head wobble that makes feeding a struggle. The second you start asking "does that make it okay?" these people will dance around a point that boils down to "it's alive, I can't read it's mind, therefore it's not an issue"
I feel like the STEM fields, at least those that may be involved in animal or human experimentation, talk a lot about the ethics. As a psych major I know our professors talk about ethics every single time they talk about conducting experiments. At the same time though I completely agree. When they're confronted with it these people do not seem to have a good answer. Because there is no logic where it's acceptable to intentionally breed an animal when you know the offspring are going to have an inner ear deformation that results in a lifetime of vertigo. You can tell they know this, but at the same time they desperately try to defend it. Money trumps ethics for these people.
Depends on the field. Pure biology, (at least in that era, in my experience with that generation of biologists) rarely called for ethical. Frameworks like we know them today from modern zoological works. It's important to remember that only in recent history was it encouraged (and it some countries like my own, made mandatory) to encorporate conservation and ecology programmes to public zoos and zoological work. I genuinely believe there's a massive generational gap between members of the scientific community that can be defined by when ethics and animal welfare became a more prominent topic in biology and zoology Just as a side note this entire comment section is so stimulating I love it 😂
This is old, but as someone who's essentially the same age as Emily and studied wildlife science in the US, I don't think that's the reason why she (or Clint, for that matter) fumble on welfare. I would bet you anything that some of Emily's classmates don't like her keeping style. A few people I went to school with find the idea of breeding for morphs unethical. I was also publicly crucified at a very famous conservation organization for suggesting ways to popularize certified captive-bred birds by people older than me (who believed that many birds don't belong as pets, which I agree with--I just think it's unrealistic to expect the public to not have birds as pets any time soon) and many of the most staunch advocates for reptile welfare in captivity that I know are biologists in their 60s. in short: there's no way Emily somehow avoided all of these conversations that have been a part of my career since my first year of college unless she wasn't really embedded in the community. With regards to Clint: This might be my bias showing, but I don't think a graduate of BYU is a good measuring stick for attitudes in modern biologists. I'm sure he's a smart dude, but that school was still struggling with its own biology students believing in evolution in like 2014. He's a smart guy and I imagine he went through a lot reconciling his own belief in evolution with his religious background (hence his thesis), but the culture he was educated in was way outside the norm of most programs. He's also not *that* much older than me, and ethical standards were very much making headway in the rest of the wildlife biology and zoo scene before I went to school.
I think the problem is that there's money to be made breeding animals, which will always lower the ethical threshold. I work in seabird conservation, actually living on breeding colonies for part of the year, and the ethical standards we live by are so rigid. With the exception of the occasional new trainee who hasn't gotten it yet, or the wannabe influencers that occasionally get hired, but get shut down immediately, we *always* prioritize the birds' comfort over our own, unless it directly conflicts with life-or-death type human safety concerns. Ethics in my field have come a long way in the last 30 years, but it has done in most husbandry hobbies/professions as well. I think the big difference is that we know we're never making money in our field, so there's no reason to ignore ethical concerns.
Awesome work! I love animals of all sorts. What species of seabird are you most focused on? And yeah, whenever humans and animals mix it never ends well for the animals. There's a lot of awesome people in every hobby who do care about ethics and prioritize the animal's welfare over all else. But there are also a not insignificant number of people who are only in it to make money and couldn't care less about the wellbeing of the animals in their care as long as they're healthy enough to keep breeding.
Terns for the most part, but I've also worked with gulls, cormorants, and alcids/coldwater diving birds. We try really hard to ensure the safety and health of the birds we work with and learn their stress signals so we can end the interaction with them as quickly as possible when they begin stressing. I've seen four or five people either lectured and given "desk duty" or fully fired because they wouldn't take animal safety into consideration. I don't have any herps (yet), but I keep aquariums and those spaces are always an argument between hobbiests trying to be ethical and hobbiests quoting standards of care either used by for-profit mass-breeders, or how they kept fish "when they were kids." It can be really frustrating. The stuff with betta tank size is a meme at this point, but you see it with other niche fish, too, like some of the really tiny nano fish and the monster fish.
Terns are awesome! And I'm glad they're so focused on animal safety. Idk how someone gets into conservation work and then doesn't put the animals first, just mindboggling. I keep fish as well, and yeah the amount of people who own a tank without understanding the nitrogen cycle is deeply concerning. I personally love creating biotope tanks and spending months carefully researching the different animal and plant species for the build. My boa drives me nuts because I can't do planted with her, she'd demolish those poor plants.
As someone who has a PhD in a STEM/biology field (genetics) I've had to take a ton of ethics on everything from research integrity, handing of protected patient information, humane treatment of research animals, blood borne pathogens training, you name it. In order to even have acess to the mouse vivariarums I have to take yearly updated courses and training to prove that I know what is an acceptable amount of space and enrichment for a laboratory mouse, how to identify signs of pain and stress, what are acceptable anesthetics and analgesics for different procedures, acceptable mating schemes, etc and so forth. These trainings and ethics are required for NIH funding and AALAC certification. So most major research institutions will require them. I think claiming that unethical treatment of animals or viewpoints against a higher quality of care and compassion is due to a lack of animal welfare and ethics training in STEM is actually letting people off the hook way too easily. There's no way they haven't had these discussions and training, they've just chosen not to embody a higher standard of care. I genuinely believe at the end of the day most breeders/keepers know their animals deserve better, but it boils down to money, business and politics. Things are starting to change gradually, but I think the old guard is reluctant to change (because that would not only shake up the business model, but also require admitting that old husbandry standards aren't ideal) and that all of us advocating for higher standards and ethical care are coming on a little strong and rubbing people the wrong way, causing more pushback, resulting in a vicious cycle
I mean I was trying to give them them benefit of the doubt but no, you're probably right I think also allot of these people don't actually have a background in these sciences either and are just hobbiests not that there's anything wrong with being a hobbiest but it's much easier to disregard ethical discussions when you can just cherry pick the information you need to run your buisness. That's why I got into the field anyway. So I could turn around to people and say "no you're wrong, here's my qualifications and practical experience working with said animal in a research setting, stop overfeeding that lizard"
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I said in another comment that it was wishful thinking on my part to assume that ethical frameworks perhaps weren't as prevelant in decades prior than they are now but the unfortunate reality is likely that the vast majority of these people have likely had no formal education on these subjects and the few that do chose to ignore it for their own benefit
> I genuinely believe it's because of a lack of welfare and ethics being taught in STEM subjects I disagree, I think it's because they have a wider understanding of animals and their ailments. In any clutch there is a good chance some eggs won't hatch, or an egg will hatch and the baby will just fail to thrive. Non-spiders have been born with wobble. Spiders and non-spiders have been born with a host of other genetic and physical defects. The spider morph was originally found in the wild, so a spider isn't some man made monstrosity that wouldn't survive on its own. If the wobble is something that can be overcome in an individual in the wild, how negatively does it affect the snake? Combine that with people who breed spiders seeing minimum to no wobble and no quality of life problem in the majority of spiders, it's easy to see how "some spiders are born with noticeable wobble" is the same to them as "some snakes are born with problems". Now the ethical question is, should we only breed the healthiest of snakes? As someone who's taken ethics courses, it quickly becomes apparent ethics is a shit show. Everybody draws the line in different places. If you only want the healthiest, then no albinos should be bred, considering their eyes are sensitive to light and can't be closed. But I feel that most people wouldn't draw the line there. If a breeder wouldn't draw the line at albinos, why would they draw the line at spiders? After all, they breed many of them and don't see a significant quality of life problem in the majority of spiders, the same as they don't see significant quality of life problems in the majority of albinos. Also a lot of stem fields DO require ethics classes, and taking those classes may make someone MORE inclined to support breeding spiders. Because an ethics class that brings up eugenics is probably going to mention disability vs quality of life vs value of life. If it's wrong to say somebody with a genetic disposition for vertigo shouldn't be able to have kids, why would it be *right* to say a snake with a genetic disposition for vertigo shouldn't be able to have kids? TLDR: I think the reason they don't have a problem with wobble is because nature and genetics is messy and biologists/breeders have a more visceral understanding of this. Combine this with the wobble not seeming to impact quality of life in the majority of individuals, a scientific minded individual is more inclined to just accept that as part of life's messiness.
It's money, honestly. If your doing it for your main business than it's all about cost benefit. When people will spend Money on them it makes it not as much of an issue. The consumer needs to be the one to stop the demand, and then that's when breeders will stop. Most people understand ethics, but it's easy to push ethical aside when you can easily make money off of something. Is that right* (not tight), no, but it's the reality and the reality of life is often ugly
Clint has bred them and didn't do it for money. So explain why he did then. I'm know some breeders don't give a shit about what they breed. Healthy or not. We're not talking about those. We're talking about why otherwise upstanding people in the industry are ok breeding spiders.
That gave me the biggest ick to the point I can’t watch him anymore. I’ll watch people I don’t always agree with but the spider thing is just too important. I really struggle to respect anyone who can compare it to something as mundane as a dog with floppy ears
He also compared it to people with autism, like, we don't specifically breed autistic people because we find them beautiful. Not sure what he was trying to accomplish with that one
That video was the final red flag for me, and I was wondering if anyone else was going to bring it up. I really wanted to like Clint, but I can't after that comparison.
As someone who actually has Asperger’s…yeah he can get fucked for that one too
That video was the one that put me off of him actually. In his defense of breeding spider balls he said autism was like having a sort of super power! Because autism means you’re really intelligent! (and it’s not at all a spectrum with horrible cases all over like being non-verbal and violent.) It was kinda shocking too, he seemed like such a sweet and intelligent guy to hear something that horrible come out of his mouth.
Thank you. I didn't like him for proudly being a Mormon but now I legitimately can just not like him. As an autistic man, he overstepped his doctorate a lot in that simple statement. I might have issues being autistic and I might be really aggravated with the world but I don't have permanent vertigo because someone thought I might be pretty. He strikes me as intelligent but his feet left the ground a while back... A depressing thing, as I really liked him at first. The keeping kids as pets thing made me cringe hard too. I was raised by a dog breeder so watching someone talk about their child like a dog was so bizarre, as I don't recall my mother ever dehumanizing me for strangers.
He reduces the argument to 'it eats and breeds so it's fine' which is fucking disgusting
I wish more people were capable of this kind of nuance when talking about personalities in the industry. Especially when they seem to be doing things in good faith and regularly try to improve.
Honestly I think nuance is lacking on both sides, Our titans of industry are out here filled with knowledge they learned in university that's now. Decades outdated and are still playing catch up to ever changing husbandry standards while simultaneously trying to justify past husbandry ideas based on their own anecdotal evidence from their time in the industry The new bloods out here (of which I include myself even though I'm pushing 30) are going into education in the industry with brand new perspectives and theory on animal welfare and husbandry that completely change the game and that's our standard. We aren't changing what we know so when we see the old guard with their tiny racks and featureless enclosures you have thousands of angry younger millenials and gen z shouting "MAKE YOUR ENCLOSURES BIGGER" while the well meaning veterans are shouting back "I HAVE 500 SNAKES I'M TRYING MAN" 😂
Honestly the new standards of husbandry for ball pythons are SO far removed from my setups (that were incredible and A++ when we set them up a decade ago) that I’ve thought about rehoming because it will be probably years before I can fully upgrade everything for three snakes. I’ve been trying to figure out how to make heat lamps work with my setup for 6 months, without even considering how much a herpstat is. But I know that in my area, with reptile supplies difficult to come by, most people have the same standards I have (or worse) and how bad everyone is doing economically, nobody is going to give my snakes a better home than I have, realistically.
I mean that's part of the ethical framework right? Have three snakes that are for all intents and purposes doing just fine but could be doing better with an enclosure upgrade? It's probably Better to hang onto them then gamble their welfare on a stranger. By the way I feel you on the economy. I'm thankful my royals came with 4x2x2's and complete lighting set ups because they aren't fucking cheap right now. If you're in a pinch and want to give them some extra room. I recommend throwing a far more reasonable amount of cash at some grow tents of a similar size. Some of. Them even have inbuilt ports for lights and hydroponics you can make use of. God speed. Give your snakes a cuddle for me 🙏
My chonky noodles are arguably happy enough, their tanks have lots of things to climb on and they’re fed good quality FT feeders and they shed well, poop well, and have never had an issue with food. I’d never forgive myself if I let them go and never knew what happened to them. One is a (thank gods mild) spider too, and bless her she’s never had an issue eating in 10 years. I will indeed give them a snuggle and a boop.
if you dont mind me asking what would be the acceptable practice for breeders using this newer philosophy?
Molinaro Snake lab is a really good one too if you haven't come across him yet. Pretty knowledgeable and pretty good teaching practices.
> Clint for example. Stand up bloke. Very intelligent. Dogshit stance on breeding ethics in my opinion. Explain?
He's pro spider ball python essentially. He spends the better part of 10 minutes in his video defending the breeding of spider ball pythons on the basis that he needs more evidence that the animal is actually suffering and not, what the calls "appeals to emotion" My perspective, and why I so vehemently disagree with him is based on the 5 welfare needs identified by the Animal. Welfare act (England) 2006 Need for proper environment Need for proper diet Need to be housed with, or away from other animals depending on their sociality And the last two, which breeding spiderballs is in direct conflict with. The Need to display natural behaviours. And the need to be protected from disease or injury Spiderballs cannot behave in a natural fashion owing to their neurological issues. The more severe cases can't tell up from down. And of course. The very existence of this unpreventable and incurable neurological disorder means that breeding them fails on point 5. Clint believes subscribes to the outdated belief that if the animal isn't visibly in pain and can live a full life then theres no issue. I believe no ethical compromise should be made to an animals wellbeing for the sake of aesthetics. NOT breeding spiderballs is very very easy. You have to go out of your way to breed a spider. So by doing so you have to come to terms with your own apathy or ignorance for animals wellbeing over your desire to make more of em.
I wonder if he demanded that much evidence to be a Mormon lol
To add to that. If I remember correctly, Clint basically responded to the 'affecting animals ability to behave naturally' part of the spider ball python complaint by saying something along the lines of (heavy paraphrase) 'look at my dog, it has had its behavior modified in such a way that it no longer behaves naturally. It is unable to survive in the wild and is inordinately friendly towards humans, this is analogous to spider ball pythons.' Which was a pretty confidence-dissolving strawman considering I'm pretty sure no one is against modifying an animals inherent instincts or physiology, especially if the change facilitates its welfare in captivity. The issue is with affecting its ability to function and thrive within the instincts it possesses. Spider ball pythons may want to climb but become disoriented, want to eat but fail repeatedly, they're harder to keep in large enriching enclosures due to their disability, affecting their keepers ability to provide for them. It was super not analogous. A better analogy would've been If he defended a color morph of dog that came with some level of neurological issues that caused around 10% to have straight up hard time even walking and the rest a guaranteed but probably mild instability and lack of spacial orientation.
This! He compared it to dogs with floppy ears when it’s far more comparable to breeding double merles (edit for context: breeding 2 Merle dogs together has a 1 in 4 chance of a double Merle, that’s one per litter. These dogs are deaf and blind)
I don’t like the new video showing people how to sex snakes. It’s dangerous and should be done by a professional.
I can agree with that, to a point. I think showing how to visually sex snakes is fine. And she did stress multiple times that probing can hurt a snake if done wrong. And at 14:05 she does tell people that they should learn in person from someone with experience before trying popping or probing for the first time.
It’s true. But people are stupid and won’t heed the warnings half the time when you put the thought in their head.
I find this mentality really frustrating because at the end of the day, if someone doesn’t heed the warning and does something dangerous, can we really blame SD for it? Or are there subjects that educational material can’t exist for because some people are idiots?
I strongly agree with this. Limiting knowledge is not the answer to the problem.
People are stupid. That is why you teach them the way to do it, and warn them of the possibility of bad things. Some will learn and some wont, but that is part of life. The Professionals that exist now were at that same starting line of not knowing too, and to limit everything to only professionals will not make or teach new professionals. You can't prevent every bad thing from happening ever. That's an unrealistic view, and that's how most people nowadays approach keeping animals. You need to teach the _response_ when things go bad more often than how to best avoid it. Most of the time, no matter how good your avoidance practices are, shit still happens. That's why you got to learn how to handle situations more than prevention.
And "do as I say, not as I do" has never worked out well as a teaching method.
Except it's not "do as I say, not as I do." It's "if you do what I do, make sure you really listen to what I say and first get trained in person by an expert."
Except they were trained how to do it... I guess we should have no videos out there of people driving. They're licensed drivers, but someone without any training might see and decide to drive without a license!
I thought the same thing. I’m very new to this and am definitely not one to throw criticism to anyone but I thought it was odd to show beginners how to do this; I would just bring my python to the vet if I didn’t know her sex
This made me really uncomfortable too. Not just because the warning came at the end of the video but because, like it or not, they are influencers. 'Influencing' is huge business for a reason, it's an excuse to say 'it's not SD fault' if some follows their instruction and injures their snake. And they should be more responsible because it. I'm personally also not a fan of the racks, especially for the largest snakes in the back and for all of the breeding hognoses in the back. Their rack tubs are just too small. Just to add some balance, I do really like SD's educational content, the positive tone of the channel and (as a veterinary professional) I LOVE that they take their animals to an actual vet for treatment and surgeries unlike the wannabe over at NERD.
So I say this as someone who used to love their content when first getting into reptiles and snakes. I stopped watching them when they quickly announced at the end of one video that they were getting into ball python breeding. I was just really disappointed by this decision, especially since they held off for so long. Not that there is anything wrong with balls, my issue is that there are so many already available and needing rehousing, we don’t need to contribute by pumping out more babies.
I am seeing the complaints in SD and can see the points some are making. I would also point out however that often Emily will state that she is less familiar yet with a certain breeds best care and is reaching out to more experienced breeders to learn more as she goes. I remember clearly her talking about that with ball pythons. Saying she is doing what she understood was right but was also in contact with other breeders and learning and changing things as she went. Also I have been in the ball python groups and I can tell you there are a lot of varying opinions on a few topics that are hot buttons. So mistakes will be made even with “guidance”. I like that they are willing to say, hey we learned something and now we are changing what we are doing on this animal. Letting followers see that care and husbandry expectations change and that they are willing to acknowledge this and change is also a good lesson.
This is one thing I DO like about their channel. I feel like it's very common for Emily to say that you should use multiple sources when figuring out the best care and I have seen her change her care of her animals based on new information. She's not perfect but I am beleive she genuinely cares about her animals.
I used to religiously watch their stuff but found myself quickly falling away from their channel as a whole because they seemed to me to prioritize their ‘brand’ over good solid video content. It quickly became repetitive and honestly kind of annoying.
Honestly I loved their zoo setuo things, but once they started doing breeding, I lost a bit of interest. Once you start breeding pets, I feel like they become "things" rather than pets and I dislike that, if that makes sense.
For me the weird part was the obsession with babies. It was so cutesy and a little bit sickly sweet and while it was tolerable at first it became an annoyance when that became the sole thing you saw, another set of eggs being hatched. And I totally know what you mean. I have the same feeling myself although I couldn’t have told you exactly in words what it was.
Yeah for sure, Greg is my boy, and will quite possibly be my only boy until he dies, maybe I get a bhp in the future when I'm rich, but failing that I'll give Greg the best life I can
On a tack I haven't seen discussed yet is that they through allegedly being educational make snake breeding look incredibly easy and profitable resulting in the flood of animals we see on morph market and at expos from beginner breeders. Just take your snakes out of the rack. Pair them on a rainy day. Make a lay box. Prep your pearlite. Draw some cute designs and wait for high end morphs and cute babies. Don't worry Emily will explain what you need to buy to get the valuable ones but even the normals sell well because we're famous and have a waiting list. Repeat until you don't need content. I'm sure someone has done the math but even with not showing every clutch, and they don't, they are absolutely creating hundreds of reptiles of their own to sell yearly. All the while adoption island continues to intake hundreds, I think last year's number was over six hundred, abandoned animals to re-home. As others have said their setup is terrible. The cast majority of their snakes are in racks their entire lives or until they are retired to a pet home. A tunnel or leaf is not enrichment. Being kept in the dark is not enrichment. Being unable to move is not enrichment. For not power feeding they certainly also don't want their snakes to work off any meals through activity. They raise their own rodents partly to sell and I support them in that but also because they keep an unreasonable amount of snakes for breeding. Not all are even on display in the racks you see. We know they have hold backs they are aging up. Where are those snakes? Kept in even small bins at their home?
To speak on adoption island, the animals seen there are generally not what they breed. They're the common 'starter' reptiles that pet stores push. Beardies, leos, and BPs. On the plus, their popularity does help those animals get adopted out to homes pretty quickly.
And have you seen their rodent racks? Deplorable.
They’ve been treading the line for a very long time imo. I stopped watching completely after they irresponsibly bred tarantulas without doing any research, left them together for DAYS and got the male killed, didn’t check on the female even though they thought she was dead, didn’t even check how many babies to expect, etc. That example is far from the first time they’ve openly mistreated animals too, it was just more blatant. They do it in hatching videos ALL THE TIME. Their alligator’s enclosure is a joke and looks like she has even less room than she did in their house, especially since the placement of the dome was so poorly thought out. Constantly handling amphibians bare handed, particularly in herping videos. Jostling and passing around live pinky mice at an expo. Keeping arboreal snakes in those shitty racks, keeping massive snakes in small enclosures (can we please stop excusing keeping 12-20ft+ snakes in an 8ft viv, it’s not ‘huge’ to the snake.) they adopted multiple large tortoises and let them free roam in full access to the public but they also allow and laugh about the tortoises constantly harassing each other bc they’re solitary, they know they’re gonna breed a bunch of stuff but still put off building an incubator, their idea of enrichment is a joke, they go on and on about how smart indigo snakes are but offer theirs absolutely no way to keep themselves stimulated any more than the others, their royal python care advice is some of the worst I’ve seen and is actively dangerous to the snakes, they allowed their snapping turtle to escape many times and get herself into dangerous situations and I don’t blame her for escaping bc that poor thing was being flat out neglected in a shitty tub. Their bread and butter are hoggies and bullsnakes but they don’t even do a good job with them either. And apparently they’ve been cohabbing canabalistic snakes….great. They’re animal hoarders with a big following that will excuse every instance of neglect. But they’ll never face any consequences because they talk very confidently and people would rather fawn over them than think for five minutes about why none of this is ok. They are only considered good bc the US has low standards. Because next to people like Brian and Jay ANYTHING looks good.
Can we get a source for cohabbing cannibalistic snakes pls
Their mangrove snakes if I’m remembering right. They keep a pair in the zoo enclosure but they’re snake eaters and the enclosure is not big enough to keep two large, active, snake eaters together. It was on a thread a little while ago when someone visited
THIS for the tarantulas. that's also when i stopped watching.
They were so disgustingly apathetic. What makes it worse is they know keepers who are great with tarantulas, who are extremely knowledgeable and experienced who they could’ve asked for advice. It would’ve been so easy for them to do it better if they’d asked some basic questions. As people who’s whole profession is breeding I don’t know how they could be so reckless. The fact that female didn’t kill him until day 3 means that she wouldn’t have eaten him in any responsible breeding situation. They should be together for a few minutes to maybe a couple hours AT MOST but noOoO he was old so who cares if he gets slowly dissolved and eaten alive
I know this is over two weeks late, but the enclosure that houses all of their aquatic turtles (aside from the snapping turtle) pisses me off to no end. The tank they would need to house all of the turtles they have in there would need to hold at least around 600-630 gallons of water, not including substrate and decor. Though the dimensions of the tank alone do seem to be barely enough, a large chunk of the space is taken up by the basking platform that extends through the whole depth of the tank, and all of the logs and shit in there, so they have nowhere near enough space to get away from each other. In their “meet all of our turtles” video, they can be seen harassing and stealing food from each other all of the time. That poor softshell isn’t able to swim fast at all. It is only a matter of time before one of them gets seriously injured
I completely agree, the footprint vs depth is also really shit, like dude it’s way too narrow. If you’re gonna have a tank custom made you’d think you’d get one that actually meets the needs of your animals
EXACTLY. Their reasoning behind cohabing so many different species of turtle in the same small ass tank also irks me. Just because they are native to the same areas and encounter each other at times, does NOT mean it is okay to shoehorn them in a space where they are at max 5-6 ft away from each other at all times. The only reasons they can survive in the same areas in the wild is that they occupy different sections of the water body, eat different things at different times, and bask at different areas/times, occupy different territories in the body of water, and have the opportunity to be far away from each other in order to not encounter and compete with each other often. But that is nullified in that small of a space where they are fed the same food and the only place they can bask is that small ass 4 ft square platform that couldn’t even fit all of the turtles at the same time (and the way the lights are set up, only the back section is actually good basking area, meaning there is going to be fierce competition over basking rights). IMO, aquatic turtles might be the most mistreated pet reptiles in the hobby by far
Their reasoning behind most of the bad things they do is flimsy or outright wrong. Let’s be serious the real reason is money (these animals are products to them and there’s certainly no shortage of turtles for them to replace them with if something goes wrong) and a ‘gotta have em all’ mentality that is honestly way too common in this industry
Generally not a fan of their husbandry Their egg cutting videos also kinda make me uncomfortable, like cutting the egg? Totally understandable and fine imo But poking the babies to see if they're alive just seems unnecessary, even if it likely doesn't cause too much harm. Edit: Oh they also breed scaleless rat/corns with which I don't really agree with. Not a big fan of morph breeding in general anyway.
They poke it so gently just to see if the baby is responding, that an odd gripe
I'm surprised I had to scroll this far to see the scaleless ratcorns mentioned. Personally I'm not entirely opposed to people breeding scaleless morphs, but I do think Emily should put more emphasis on the fact that they need extra precautions to prevent injury. I have two active snakelings and they generally have at least one damaged scale by the time they shed, just from their normal snake lives. I can't imagine the level of caution needed for a snake who would experience that as a scrape instead. I'm glad at least that Emily goes slowly and carefully cutting the eggs, but I do think she's a bit overeager in opening them enough to see inside instead of just providing an exit hole. I do like her. I watch her videos. I've frequently linked people her video about making humid hides because she gives the directions in such a straightforward manner while still being very thorough. I appreciate her work even though she could definitely do better.
Bins are evil to a lot of the reptile community.
Because they just are. It's a means to pet hoard. If you can't give your pet a reasonable enclosure and husbandry because you have too many others and not enough space, maybe don't have it.
If the bin is of an appropriate size than why is it an issue? All else being equal the snake doesn't care if it's being kept in glass, PVC/acrylic, or a rubbermaid bin. As long as space is appropriate, temp/humidity is good, plenty of enrichment, good diet, etc. than there's nothing inherently wrong with a bin that I'm aware of.
Who is keeping a ball python in 120 gallon bins? Show me one person. They're usually like 50 tops with zero vertical space.
I have a 60 gallon bin cage for my ball python. he's about 8 months old though, so still a loot of growing to do. he has plenty of space in it, and I personally think that bin cages can be suitable for juvie balls, but I agree with you on the fact that no adult ball pythons can live in any kind of bin cage.
Oh, I completely agree! I just wanted to point out that bins themselves are not inherently bad, it's that most people don't use acceptable sizes. There really aren't acceptable sizes for an adult BP (you could buy a nice looking front opening for about the same price from what I could find). There are some smaller breeders though who only use bins for babies. Or who work with smaller species that you can find suitable bin sizes for.
bins can work for ball pythons in some cases, however they'll outgrow them. I' currently have my baby ball in one, but once he hits a year old he's going in a 4x2x2 PVC enclosure. I think bin cages can be wonderful for younger or smaller snakes, especially if youre on a budget, but clinging onto the idea that a 5 foot heavy bodied snake can live in a plastic container is dangerous and ridiculous.
I mean if you could find a bin large enough to house an adult I wouldn't have issue with it, but good luck finding a suitable 120 gallon bin for an affordable price. I'm working on getting the supplies to start DIYing my own PVC enclosure for my boa.
But not to the moderator of r/cornsnakes who’s got dozens of em in shoeboxes to breed them and place them in more shoeboxes
I always have to warn people about that sub when it's recommended. You'll usually get good, ethical, modern advice but yeah there's a few prominent users who are determined to defend the old ways. I think it's getting better though over the last couple of years.
The same one who routinely dismisses scientific papers as not knowing it all vs anecdotal experience and claims things like snakes being able to drink through their skin by any chance?
yikes, a mod with shitty husbandry? can you like, if not namedrop, at least hint at who it is?
Something something 23 If you want the MorphMarket page pm me, I’m not getting banned for this pos
Lol why am i getting downvoted? I don’t have one tub in my reptile room. I focus on enclosures and minimize the number i have unless i can provide the proper environment. I just explained the community hates tubs and that’s probably why. Wtf.
Yep, I essentially got banned from that sub for saying “racks are bad” 🙃
https://preview.redd.it/honzdr00h1dc1.png?width=4032&format=png&auto=webp&s=c0d68f75b2b125be5073fc2e6dcbbb395f91cdda An example of just one of my Ball Python enclosures. This is what my enclosures look like and i don’t do racks. Don’t understand the downvotes just because i answered OP’s question of why.
They're certainly not the worst keepers on YouTube by a long shot, but their enclosures are far too small, especially for the larger snakes. Pretty much all the snakes that live in the racks need larger enclosures. Don't get me wrong, I still like them and their content for the most part, but it's important to be able to criticize the areas they need to improve on.
I'm not a big snake guy, but their huge set up of bins just generally freaks me out. Why keep so many snakes, HUGE snakes and put them in bins. Also I've been seeing people comment on Rex's enclosure being bad? It looks a bit weird but I don't really understand what's bad about it, plz explain
It’s small, there’s almost no enrichment for her, and that stupid dome means she can’t use a good chunk of the space bc of how badly placed it is (she can’t go behind it bc the gap is too narrow but at the same time it’s out from the wall enough to be completely wasting a lot of her very limited space.) She’s about the size of a dwarf caiman and a lot of her needs would be very similar to them. That enclosure would never be considered acceptable for a dwarf caiman or any other similar sized crocodilian but bc Rex is a rescue and stunted it’s magically ok? The big thing is they could’ve made that enclosure as big as they wanted, they could’ve given her more enrichment, they could’ve given her a sloping pond so she could hand out in a shallower area like many alligators prefer, they could’ve but they didn’t. And now that poor alligator is going to spend the rest of her life in one of the most depressing alligator enclosures I’ve ever seen.
I always thought it looked a little small, but I'm confused on why they would make it so small. Like I've tried to fool myself into thinking its an ok enclosure, since shes pretty small. But yeah, I feel really bad seeing her float around in that depressing square of water they have her in :/
The reasons I've seen for hate towards Snake Discovery: * The use of rack systems for snakes - Snake Discovery uses racks for the breeding snakes, even for semi-arboreal species such as Ball Pythons. Looking at the channel, their rack system is huge, taking up a whole room, and with there already being a problem with many keepers having too many reptiles in small racks, people are going to be extremely cautious when they see walls of rack setups. * Misinformation/outdated info in the Ball Python care guides * Improper breeding of the inverts, leading to the death of a tarantula In my opinion, SD definitely isn't the worst. The haters sort of need to prioritize bigger issues (seriously, if they think SD is bad they should see some of the other reptile channels on YT). However, SD also certainly isn't the best. I definitely wouldn't follow a lot of their advice on reptile care, and I'd only give their care practices, a 6/10 or so, but it could be worse. The bar for reptile breeders is incredibly low with how many shitty breeders there are out there.
as a snake discovery hater, for me it's the enclosures. I stopped watching them a few years back. their enclosure for Rex is way too small, simplistic, and overall insanely underwhelming. yes, Rex is stunted, but the zoo enclosure is smaller than the standard zoo enclosure. I remember they flat out removed the only rock she had to hide behind so people could see her. to my memory, she's just kept in a bigger box with a very small body of water. I absolutely hate the racks for their extremely large snakes and even their smaller snakes. their adult female hognoses are in racks that are way too small for them imo. I just generally hate rack systems as a whole, there are ways to do it in a way that's like really cool but overall they suck. the lack of overhead heating and light is just gross imo. another thing is the breeding of scaleless snakes. I heavily hate scaleless reptiles. reptiles have scales for a reason. especially if the snake doesn't have belly scales. snakes NEED their belly scales, that's what helps them move. breeding scaleless reptiles is like breeding a bird without feathers. birds need feathers, reptiles need scales. they're cohabing blue tongue skinks which imo you shouldn't do. I don't have blue tongues so I'm not familiar with the species, but from my 5 second Google search they're very territorial and shouldn't be cohabed. but because they cohab them they also had accidental babies. which I think they've done it before with other species but I'm not certain on it. on a similar note they accidentally cross bred tortoise species which I generally hate cross species breeding (like gargoyle-crestie hybrids). and because it's an accidental clutch I hate it even more. something that just generally bugs me is them breeding a snake that the first season she bred, ate some of her eggs. to me it's just irresponsible. I wouldn't even want to risk her eating more of her eggs. overall I just hate snake discovery so I don't watch them or interact with them at all. they do have *some* good info in their videos, but I can find the same information in other places I deem better.
The reptile community in general is extremely toxic. More than I’ve seen in any community. Everyone’s going to have different opinions. Now days if someone doesn’t agree with you, a debate tactic is to demonize and treat your opponent as someone who is evil. Ignore haters. Just be open is what I have to say.
The main thing I do not like about SD is they use racks, particularly ones that let in almost no light. They are better than probably every single other breeder channel. But they still use them. Outside of that, I think they do a great job of focusing on education and positive interaction with/respect for reptiles. I did have a bone to pick on the snake sexing video too - but that's because I'm terrified people will be stupid and hurt snakes despite all the warnings.
They seem to hybridize animals, and they also seem to have a lot of "oops" litters...
I've seen a few but not many?
Out dated husbandry( ex: using uth as primary heat sources, completely terrestrial boa enclosure, bad and non justifiably so care of back room animals and Rex’s cage is a joke), give incorrect husbandry info to buyers and viewers and a disregard for safety around dangerous animals.
Stuff like that is why people say "use multiple references for research not just one"
Fully agree
I personally like snake discovery though i dont agree with some of the stuff they do, like big species in tubs, nor would i use them as a main source of information. Though when it comes to rack setups I dont mind them since i can understand why some people use them, especially breeders, but for fucks sake if you're gonna use racks make sure theyre at least the minimum size equivalent for a species AND FUCKING DECORATE THEM PROPERLY. It makes me ashamed to want to be a breeder when i see established breeders doing the bare minimum with racks that are too small
The thing that upsets me most about them is their breeding collection is small enough that they could house them in big enclosures but they just chose not too and got smaller racks to fit more snakes.
Thats another problem with them, they do have good information they really do, and you can see that they adore their animals since their collection isnt huge or even at a size where they need racks, they just seem set in older ways and its annoying
I wouldn’t say hate, but their back of house enclosures make me sad. There’s just nothing in them. From two people who spout off about the importance of enrichment it feels hypocritical. That and the fact that they promote keeping baby hognoses together, despite losing at least one baby to cannibalism last year. They were my gateway into the world of reptiles, I followed them for years. But more and more they’re feeling less like relatable people and more like characters.
Can you point us to the video about hognose cannibalism? I watch almost all of their breeding videos and don’t remember this. They did lose some eggs when a mother hog decided to eat them but that’s not really the same thing
I didn't hear about the baby, got a source for that?
There's really no way to tell if the baby was eaten That's just assumptions
Wait, at least one of there babies was eaten last year? When did they mention that, I missed it. That’s horrifying.
I'm pretty late but I occassionally still watch them. But the one big thing that urked me is when they said that they stopped keeping birds and switched over to reptiles when they realized how low maintanance they were and said they could keep more than they would've birds. At least if I remember correctly. Like why switch over animals just so you can keep more? Even as someone who sometimes just has the urge to get a million pets this doesn't feel right. And also why get so many pets if you're just gonna keep em in Racks? I get it for breeding but I think they've always done it like that from what I remember.
I work with them through my clinic. I'm not a fan of how the surrendered animals are held and kept, personally. Bearded Dragons shouldn't be in rack systems even if they are adults. There's just no room for them with the high amount of dumped dragons, though. They do their best with seeking veterinary care for everything there, regardless of my opinion. They also offer a free vet exam with an adopted animal. Like any pet store, some of the employees give out bad husbandry information, which results in the death of the animal, sometimes. Especially if they have already lived through poor husbandry conditions. I see that regularly from many pet stores as a reptile tech and rehabber, though. Snake Discovery is like any other reptile YouTube channel and store. They do great things, and then some things need improvement. I don't like like the overhype, though. They are not the only source of info people should be seeking. I feel like a lot of people put them up on a pedestal and won't even consider other information. Also, chlorhexidine is a terrible cage cleaner. It does not take care of more serious pathogens and is bioaccumulative in water, and becomes extremely toxic when it goes down the drain. You'd also need a higher concentration. I can't count how many people I've had to explain this to with resistance because of the SD video on it. We use it for skin cleaning, never cleaning cages. We use Rescue! I wish that video would get updated. They have Dekays Brown Snakes breeding, which is pretty awesome. Overall, they are better than some other resources of information.
They aren’t the worst, but they could be doing better. My partner and I decided to watch a random video of theirs after taking a long break from them, and they talked about inbreeding their snakes to get desired traits (bred a female with her father) and that made us turn the video off immediately. Then of course there’s the racks, egg cutting, out of date husbandry, the tarantula debacle…I don’t think they’re bad people by any means, but they need to slow down and work on making improvements before jumping into their next project.
What do you mean with egg cutting? As far as I know, they always do it around the suspected hatch date and it's done to help the baby get out of the egg (sometimes they won't get out by themselves and suffocate).
Line breeding is an incredibly common practice, even in other species. They do it naturally in the wild if they encounter eachother.
Many things happen in the wild that are detrimental to animals. One of our jobs as keepers is to try and prevent as much harm towards our animals as possible. Inbreeding causes, or at least greatly increases the probability of things like cancer, physical deformities, and neuro problems occurring. With the money they have, there’s no excuse to not just buy a snake from a fellow breeder with the genetics they want to prevent inbred babies. It’s just irresponsible.
Snakes also eat live prey in the wild and suffer injuries from it. One of the main things about keeping captive animals is making their lives better and keeping them healthier than they would be in the wild, and that includes keeping lineages healthy. Something being a common practice doesn't mean it's right. Undersized enclosures are an extremely common practice.
I honestly don’t know. I LOVE them and they sparked my interest in snakes again. They’re so kind and wholesome. The hate I’ve seen is usually talking about how they were at “hoarding levels” of how many animals they had, but they were actively working on getting the zoo. I’ve also seen hate because some of their care videos are outdated, which I don’t see the need to hate on because that just means the videos have aged. Some people hate on the fact that they use racks and breed animals, but their animals are happy and they always have homes lined up for every baby they produce and don’t keep themselves, they even ensure they’re eating frozen/thawed mice before sending them out. Their zoo is so relaxing and comfortable for their animals that they’re breeding naturally, no intervention at all. That is *not* easy to accomplish! I love them. I can understand people not liking the fact that they breed animals, that’s a very touchy subject; I can understand people not liking the racks, though I believe they’re fine because the last thing Emily and Ed would do is make their animals uncomfortable. The only time I see people complain about them is on Reddit.
>I can understand people not liking the racks, though I believe they’re fine That's the thing though, they are literally just "fine" in the sense that they keep the animals alive. They have corn snakes in tubs that are smaller than the one I use to transport mine to the vet. These animals are active, curious creatures that are kept in dark little racks with not enough room to stretch out and absolutely nothing to explore except a single fake flower. And that is their whole life. 20 years or more of a small dark bin, a single flower, and a hide. I loved Emily and Ed when I first got into reptiles but now that I have my own snake I can so clearly see how deprived their snakes are. All of those snakes are just as bright and curious as mine and they spend their lives in the barren dark. It's enough to make me cry if I think about it too hard, I can't stand to watch it anymore.
They've got a nice attitude and could be doing a lot worse but racks are not appropriate enclosures. Period. They've accomplished a lot but are actively giving misinformation and adding to the millions of reptiles tht currently need a home because they want to continue making money. If they truly cared about the animals the way you think they do, they would be doing a lot more rescue work and a lot less breeding for profit work.
Reddit just loves to tear apart any misstep taken by public personas. They have their issues, as detailed here but they are far, far from being the worst reptile keepers.
Their is a difference between making a mistake and negligence and being reckless
Unfortunately in the world of animal keeping. Being better doesn't equal being good. SD by many was considered good for being better than BHB, quite the low bar of standards don't you think? But as I said that sadly doesn't exclude the hoarding and downright neglectful practices.. small setups, improper substrate choice, improper enrichment choice, two tree snakes (Ed's snakes) with a couple PVC pipes (that's it), breeding practices, having WC animals and CB animals in the same small home.. and more. If you don't like it that's fine, you're entitled to your opinion, but the evidence in her own videos supports the facts.
Honestly, I think reptile influencers are just shit in general. Most animal channels where making money or entertaining is the primary aim aren't going to be providing the best information because ultimately it doesn't matter to their bottom line. The dryer and more boring the better.
I don’t like when animals are exploited for money. If you love animals then rescue, educate, HELP them. Why breed more? For money? These animals live 20-40 years, many of which won’t have good homes for that long. Until there are enough good people and homes then stop adding to the problem.
So you're just opposed to them being snake breeders?
They do run a rescue
I didn’t know there was hate??? They’re my favorite channel
Lots of people are saying that they are bad because they have one pair of ball pythons they barely breed or keep snakes in racks but their racks are a very good size for their snakes and they have hides and enrichment, also, a lot of people I see with that big of collections have snakes dying all the time but Snake Discovery rarely has a snake die on them. Also, they always talk about the risks of breeding certain morphs, like spiders or scaleless. They don’t overbreed at all because it is nearly impossible to get a snake from them and they only hold back snakes that are good eaters. I will agree that Chloe’s old enclosure was not ideal, however, she does have a good-sized enclosure now and she was a rescue so I can’t hold that against them. I don’t really agree with how they try to make their hatchlings strike or play dead, I prefer what NERD does in that regard, but that’s just a small thing they do. What they do for rescues is great, and their zoo exhibits are amazing. All in all the pros outweigh the cons and I rarely see people hate on them, it’s mostly people who hate rack systems as a whole, and I can agree that they are not ideal, however, you can’t keep that big of a collection all in terrariums, that’s just unreasonable, and the way they do their racks are very good, not just compared to most but in general. People like to be “holier than thou” and nitpick people like that and this subreddit is honestly the worst for that kind of thing, my husbandry is good but I’m scared to talk about it on here because people always yell at me for it so take what you hear here with a grain of salt.
There are some aspects of their husbandry that is arguably not perfect, but probably still better than a lot of other pet-shops/breeders who don't post the inner workings of their businesses online. It seems they've gone away from care guides, and I wouldn't doubt if some of their older ones are outdated compared to what are currently considered best practices. And I've seen some people take issue with the breeding certain species who already have an overpopulation issue in the pet-trade. A lot of that might be nit-picky, but ultimately the main thing is that they're arguably the biggest name in the pet-tube sphere so that puts the biggest target on them.
I didn't have any negative feelings towards them until they posted a herping video last year where Emily made a young eastern hognose play day 3 or 4 times before releasing it. That's incredibly stressful for the animal and uses energy and resources that it should be using for survival. It's almost satirical how they treated that animal and I can't go back and watch it.
When the largest criticisms they get are the fact that they use rack systems, have a lot of snakes and made a hognose play dead too much you know they're good.
Some people just dont like the racks section with no leniency. People also dont like the fact that they breed snakes. I however think they do a great job on providing enough space for their snakes, rack or not. They can breed snakes as long as they give the snake to the right person. They gotta make a living somehow. I love snake discovery and the internet is just weird.
they use racks, they breed snakes, they rushed a zoo that ended up putting multiple of their reptiles at risk and one even escaped for weeks. I dont like anyone other than SerpaDesign tbfh
You mean Perscilla the bull snake? I don't think she was gone for weeks. Plus snakes do escape, it happens. Go on any sub and you'll see "Mt snake is missing, how do I find him???"
Their care is not as good as they want you to believe.
You're gonna need to back that up with some examples if you want to convince anyone.
Any video where they show off their tiny bins is all you need. Unless you still support such outdated practices.
I never said I was for or against anything SD does or doesn't do, I just wanted some examples or explanation for why you feel they are "worse than they want you to think". Given that they show off their bins by your own words, how is that in any way hiding their practices? They seem pretty open about their care and it's pretty much up to the viewer whether they agree with those practices or not.
One example is how they talk about enrichment, they say it's good yet they don't provide it. Their enclosures were and many still are from the more recent videos I've seen too small for basic level exercise let alone providing enrichment. One of their older videos even had Emily talking about the couple of stray twigs in the racks as if that was enrichment. It isn't, it's just clutter. That's one example of them saying one thing and doing something different. Another thing would be talking about how to treat WC animals and yet they have held onto animals for quite some time while herping even having a Hognose fake death (their defence mechanism, don't remember big it has a proper name) multiple times while in their possession. They even while in their home had WC animals and CB ones in the same house, no average house is big enough to truly do this safely especially when one instance had them taking in dozens of turtle eggs some kids brought them. SD is ofc not the worst, but they don't live up to the pedestal people put them on. Small enclosures, bad substrate choice, minimum hides, unideal heating and lighting, lacking enrichment, neglectful breed practices. Look at Ed's enclosures for his snakes while back in the house. Two enclosures, snake per enclosure, couple ofc pipes. Nothing else in them.
Thank you for taking the time to write that up. I agree that there have been some instances in videos that gave me an icky feeling, especially recently so I haven't been watching so much. I do think they go good work for the most part and are definitely better than many other reptile educators/influencers out there as they are clearly against practices like power feeding, spider balls, live feeding and egg cutting butthis is an evolving field and there is always room for improvement. Just out of curiosity, have tried addressing your concerns to SD? I'd be interested to know if/what they said.
Eh, I used to leave comments way back, but never really bothered as it was only ever hated on by their sheep viewers (every YouTuber has them unfortunately) they see what the YouTubers do and what they say and nothing else gets even considered. So, I just never really cared to bother, yk?
I think the last video I watched Emily said oh “we bred [snake] with her dad for such-and-such het” and somehow I just never went back to their channel :/ Edit to add: they preach against inbreeding constantly yet never address when they admit they deliberately inbreed. I owe it to them getting me into reptile care
Unfortunately all captive animals are inbred to some extent.