Kevin Arbuckle, coiner of the term, outlined folklore husbandry as: "... methods or supposed 'best practices' which become established without proper evaluation, often justified simply because 'it has always been done that way' or for otherwise unknown or poorly substantiated reasons.'"
Read the full article here.
I'm glad someone found the words to describe something that has always been driving me crazy in this field. There has always been a percentage of folks in the animal care field - in every aspect, from zookeepers to vets to rehabbers to hobbyists - who develop these ideas without much basis in reality, then convince themselves that they are fact. Mostly, they take bad husbandry practices (usually as labor-free or inexpensive as possible), then convince themselves that those are actually the best practices, and that if you attempt to improve upon them, you're actually hurting the animal.
Two examples that I've dealt with lately. One is the belief that being brought inside is a fate worse than death for any animal, and that it is preferable for a tropical mammal to spend its entire winter huddled under a heat lamp or crammed into a nest box than it is to be kept inside, even if it is only for the worst of the winter. Granted, outdoor enclosures are usually bigger and more enriched, but that doesn't do the animal any good if it can't leave its tiny shelter, otherwise face the risk of frostbite. I once worked at a roadside zoo where the owner prided himself on his monkeys being outside year round while the (AZA-accredited) "big city zoo" a few miles away kept them "suffering" in an indoor rainforest building. Never mind that for five months of the year, our tamarins didn't leave their shoebox-sized nest box. Mostly, he just didn't want to pay for a holding building.
The second is the belief that anything apart from cleaning and feeding is "stressful" to the animal and must be avoided at all costs. Enrichment? Stressful. Training? Stressful? Taking weights and giving physical exams? Way too stressful. I've known some folks who would almost rather let their animals die than "stress" them. You know what? Life is stressful.
The main group that this criticism seems aimed at, at least in Warwick's article, are reptile folks, especially hobbyist breeders. It's customary to house snakes in racks and racks of what are essentially plastic sweater boxes, each with newspaper bedding, a water bowl, and a little hide box. The belief among some hobbyists is that snakes are agoraphobic and feel happier and more secure in tiny enclosures where they can't see anything that might stress them.
Granted, snakes are not mammals. They are not as active, not as intelligent, and don't need as much space as a mammal of the same size. That's not to say that they don't benefit from variation in their habitat, room to explore, and the chance to satisfy curiosity. A larger, diverse enclosure can provide for more outlets for natural behaviors - swimming, climbing, basking, shedding, tunneling, hiding. Some species can be integrated into large, complex, mixed-species exhibits.
Reptiles are stoic, and they look a lot tougher than they are. Many species are quite forgiving of inadequate husbandry and will survive just fine in relatively stark, mediocre enclosures. That's not the point, though. Whether a facility is a zoo, a rescue center, a breeder, a vet clinic, a research lab, or whether it's not a facility at all, just a private pet owner, the goal should be to strive for something more. As my favorite Star Trek quote reminds us, "Survival in Insufficient" - our animals deserve to thrive.
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