Presentations of Pets

When I was younger, one of my favorite treats, offered about once a year, was a trip to the National Zoo in Washington, DC.  I loved all of the exhibits, but my favorite was probably the reptile house... or at least, most of it.  You see, on my way to the displays of the Komodo dragons (a great rarity in those days), gharials (still a rarity), giant Aldabra tortoises, and massive green anacondas, I had to walk through what I called "the pet store." 

It seemed like half of the exhibits were made up of species that I saw every time I went to the pet store to buy crickets for my lizards at home.  Bearded dragons.  Leopard geckos.  Corn snakes.  Blue-tongued skinks.  For a kid who came excited to see rare and exciting animals, it annoyed me.  It would have been like going through the Small Mammal House, just two doors down, and seeing guinea pigs and rabbits.

Since then, the collection of the National Zoo's Reptile Discovery Center has upgraded considerably, with many endangered, unique species where once leopard geckos idled.  Looking back on it, though, I wondered if maybe there was a lesson which could have been learned using those "boring" exhibit animals.

A lot of zoos talk about the dangers and difficulties of exotic pets - usually geared towards monkeys and macaws.  A lot less attention is given to the not-so-exotic exotic pets - the reptiles, birds, amphibians, and small mammals that you see in every pet store, or every expo.  For every one person who has a hyacinth macaw, there are dozens, maybe hundreds, with an African grey parrot.  Every reticulated python keeper is greatly outnumbered by those who keep ball pythons.  Surrounding these more-conventional exotic pets is a lot of misinformation (what Clifford Warwick referred to as "folklore husbandry" in an article I shared earlier this month).  Ball pythons do best in small, dark, sterile enclosures.  Keeping leopard geckos or bearded dragons on natural substrate is a surefire way to kill them via impaction.  Parrots don't really need to fly.  And so on...

To be sure, many zoos that keep these species use them as educational ambassador animals... which means that they are kept usually off-exhibit in pretty plain conditions, similar to what a typical pet owner might use.

I think we can do better.  In fact, I know we can.  On a recent visit to Columbus Zoo, one of my favorite experiences was watching their African grey parrot flock flit noisily around in a large enclosure that you would have probably expected to see a more "exciting" bird species in.  Watching them,  I realized that I had never seen - ever - more than two African grey parrots together in my life... and here was a flock.

I like to think that devoting a little exhibit space to a few common pet species - not just reptiles and birds, but also maybe ferrets, sugar gliders, hedgehogs, or chinchillas - in high quality exhibits - treating them like zoo animals, not pets - might help highlight proper husbandry of these species.  Proper signage pointing out these features could help quite a bit as well.

Someone who sees a ball python in a large zoo enclosure, where it has natural substrate, a water feature large enough to soak in, branches to climb, and a cave to hide in, might be more inclined to offer their own pet snake a better, more enriching environment at home rather than a sock drawer with a little plastic hide-hut and a tiny water bowl.  Similarly, someone who see a flock of sun conures soaring across an aviary might think better than getting a single bird to keep in a cage in their living room.  It might also help us re-evaluate the care of every animal in our collections, including those education ambassador snakes and turtles and parrots.  Are we treating them with the same consideration and care as we are the exhibit animals?

If animals are to live in human care - and I believe that zoos and aquariums are an essential component of conservation - they deserve the best of care.   If we can help provide better care - through encouragement and example - to private caretakers and pet owners, so much the better.