Television...

So I'm here in GA for a couple of days with my aunt and uncle. I don't have cable at home, but I sat at the TV with them because my uncle loves to watch nature shows such as survivor man.

Well today a reptile show came on--some guys in the southern US (maybe Florida?) who are paid to catch reptiles in people's homes or neighbor's homes, move 'em out, care for them, sell them, breed them, and who knows what else...

At any rate, in this particular episode they removed about 9 or 10 enormous pythons from a guy's trailer and shed. Very few of the snakes were contained in any sort of way. One was curled up in a pizza box...another slithering around the ceiling in a shower, and another was just chillin' on the floor of the shed. Some of them (like an African rock python) were a little pissy. Who knows how long since they had eaten, and the men catching them were doing a bad job of it IMO, constantly jabbing them with sticks and laughing and carrying on and jumping back in fright.

I have not seen anything so disgusting as people picking up a snake that is not ANGRY but is instead FRIGHTENED and wants nothing more than to get away--and them just freaking out to the point of agitating it into striking. Maybe they even do this on purpose for the drama of the show! Thanks guys, you're putting a real good name out there for reptile keepers and breeders. Apparently all of us keep 20 foot snakes uncontained in our homes and train them to eat our neighbor's children.

In another show called Dual Survivors, two idiots "tracked" a snake, that they claimed would be a big 'un that could eat them whole, through a swamp. I looked at the trail they were following...it was only 4 inches or so wide. I guessed the snake would be no bigger than 6 feet. Sure enough they find this LITTLE burmese python. Oh how triumphant they are after cutting its head off. Good job. You killed a baby snake.

Sorry...television makes me rant. Glad I don't have it.

Aww, that's awful! You need to ask them if they have NatGeo Wild and try to catch an episode of Python Hunters. It's really neat! It's about a group of guys that go out into the Everglades, etc, and look for Burms and other invasive species of reptiles and capture them and keep them, or donate them places for educational purposes. The one I watched the other day was about one of the guys and his kids taking some of their personal collection to a school to educate the kids about them. What was neat is that they were saying that their hope is to get them at a young age, educated about what really goes into caring for reptiles, and teaching them research what they are interested in so that they will know how big they get and what they will need to eat, all in the hopes of keeping non-natives out of the Florida wildlife. It's neat to watch them go out and catch stuff, too!

Ugh.. I hate those shows. Animal Planet is the same nowadays after the whole "invasive species" thing. Fear sells and marketing this idea that giant pythons are going to move from Florida northward to eat poodles in Midwestern backyards just keeps viewers glued to their seats. I hate that their fearful speculation isn't backed by actual science but is broadcast as fact by media outlets. *grumble*

I'm of the (unfortunate?) mindset that burmese pythons have been irreversibly introduced into our environment, and like lady bugs, kudzu vines, and any other number of originally non-native species, we are going to have to learn how to cohabitate with these "new" animals. Florida is part of the tropics, after all. It is not all that surprising that we'd end up with tropical species from other countries.

I don't advocate releasing pet snakes and non-native species into the wild, of course. But all of this Animal Planet hype about the evil burmese pythons makes me feel just a little bit sick.

DaganGecko wrote:

I'm of the (unfortunate?) mindset that burmese pythons have been irreversibly introduced into our environment, and like lady bugs, kudzu vines, and any other number of originally non-native species, we are going to have to learn how to cohabitate with these "new" animals. Florida is part of the tropics, after all. It is not all that surprising that we'd end up with tropical species from other countries.

I don't advocate releasing pet snakes and non-native species into the wild, of course. But all of this Animal Planet hype about the evil burmese pythons makes me feel just a little bit sick.

I don't feel like Python Hunters is part of the hype. The guys that hunt the snake are all avid reptile keepers, and, one even produced white alligator babies! The guy that took the animals to the school had a huge room with a ton of racks that they were getting everything out of.

I see what they are saying.. they don't portray the burms as evil snakes, but there are so many in the wild now that native species are having to compete to survive. And this is all because of irresponsible pet owners. Even though I am a reptile lover myself, I do understand the issues that non-native species of anything cause. They were even talking about non-native snails/slugs. As well as iguanas and Savannah monitors. They don't harm the animals they catch, they take records and rehome them.

I think it's good to have at least one show that shows people who care about what's going on, and educating people about reptiles. I haven't watched the other stuff because those shows use scare tactics and it's annoying!

Actually, it was not mainly immature reptile keepers that were releasing their captives into the wild; the problem actually started with Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and the problem was building since that time. When Hurricane Andrew struck, it wiped out a lot of buildings, including exotic pet stores, which released those snakes in to the wild. There were actually studies done as well, including DNA testing, and they believe that it was either a single pair or trio of original burmese pythons that caused the problem, and after breeding for 20+ years, resulted in a large wild population. The DNA testing showed most of the burmese pythons caught to be somewhat related to one another. Populations that are very similar in DNA (that is to say, they are mostly all related) tend not to fare well in the wild, as similar genes don't have the ability to adapt to change as well, so the population would have most likely dwindled at some point in the future anyway. But as it stands, the 2009-2010 frigidly cold winter solved the problem that the lawmakers in Florida could not figure out; Mother Nature wiped out most of the wild burmese pythons in Florida (and thus why it hasn't been on the news as much this past year). Don't quote me on this part, but I think something like 3 burmese pythons have been found in the wild in Florida to date since the 3-week freeze; someone correct me if that number has been updated.

Of course, what made me the maddest about the whole situation when Florida lawmakers were so concerned with the wild burmese python population was they were afraid these snakes were going to wipe out a packrat subspecies found in the Florida Keys. The species is on the endangered list, and so perhaps their fears were justified, but they forgot one thing: Want to know why they are on the endangered list in the first place? Because HUMANS encroached upon their territory, built homes, roads, etc. and wiped out their natural habitat. So apparently it's OK for humans to wipe out 90-95% of these packrats, but heaven forbid if a burmese python manages to capture and eat the last one. That snake, had it captured and consumed the last one, wouldn't have even realized what it had done, merely going on with its day-to-day life and meeting one of it's basic needs to feed. But humans knew this was happening, yet they continued to let it happen.

Oh yeah, Pam, I forgot about that! I feel like they mentioned that on the show, too. It's interesting..