Pride, Prejudice, and Rarity

"I think it was at this time that I suddenly realized the full meaning of the term 'rare.'  Hitherto when people talked about a rare animal I had always been under the impression that this simply meant that it was rare in museum collections or in zoological gardens, but actual rarity in numbers had not really impinged on me.  This, I think, was because people tended to say an animal was rather rare as though this were an accolade, as though it were something the animal should be proud of."

- Gerald Durrell, A Bevy of Beasts

The Angolan python, in appearance, at least, resembles nothing as much as a somewhat larger version of a ball python - I could easily imagine seeing a very large ball python or a small Angolan python labeled as each other in a zoo display, and me not noticing the difference if I didn't look too closely.  The one is a species which has been very uncommon in the pet trade - and not extremely common in zoos - due to the difficulty in collected specimens from war-torn Angola.  The other is one of the most common pet snakes in the world.

What makes the Angolan python so desirable to so many pet keepers, then?  Why is an Angolan python highlighted in reptile houses, while the ball python is used for education programs?

The answer is the rarity.   If the situations were reversed, I could imagine Angolans being "a trash snake" that zoo snobs barely glanced at, with facilities being flooded with requests to take in surrendered pets, while balls were treated as gems.

The Durrell quote at the top of this post has always spoken to me, because it seems that we value some animals solely because they're rare, and value them for that rarity alone.  In some contexts, in could make sense - ideally zoos and aquariums would be devoting resources to conserving and breeding rare animals.  In other cases, it can decidedly take a sinister turn.  When a species of chelonian, or parrot, or frog, or what have you, is known to be rare, that has a tendency to immediately make it more desirable in the pet trade - legal or otherwise - than it would if it were common.  That in turn has a tendency to drive demand and result in more collection (often illegal, usually unsustainable) from the wild to feed the demand, further endangering the species in the wild.

Even in zoos, where we are committed to conservation, we sometimes talk in such a manner where we seem to be bragging.  It's like we're saying that if we have an animal that is this rare, you know it must mean we're a good zoo.

I sometimes also worry that it creates the impression that rarer animals have more value (in an inherent rather than financial sense) that common ones.  That's simply not true.  A giant panda does not *deserve* better care than an American black bear just because one is found in three US zoos and the other is in hundreds.  Every animal deserves the best care that we can provide them, whether they are rare or common, exotic, native, or domestic - and whether we are zookeepers or private pet owners.

I wonder if maybe messaging would be different if we re-framed how we talked about rarity.  Yes, some animals - apex predators, island species, extreme specialists - are naturally rare.  But many others are only rare because of our activities.  Perhaps we should view an animal's rarity not as something that the animal should be proud of - but rather as something that we should be ashamed of.