How do people feel about the current push towards replicating nature in every aspect of husbandry? Thoughts?
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Chris
Jan 08, 2021
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Well, I suppose I’ll start. There’s something intuitive about replicating nature in our husbandry practices, but my sense is that we need to come at it with more critical thought and reflection than it is currently afforded. For instance, wild chameleons are exposed to all sorts of parasites, bacteria/viruses, predators, and environmental stresses such as famine and drought. These hardships have been the ovens that have forged the robust species we see today—allowing those individuals that have survived these challenges to pass on their genes. Does this mean we ought to be exposing our captive chameleons to these conditions? Doesn’t replicating nature mean we should? Obviously these are aspects of nature to which none of us would willingly expose our captive charges. This suggests that we need some principled means of sorting those natural conditions we should be replicating from those we shouldn’t. But no one screaming for naturalistic husbandry presents such a principle.
Maybe we can just shoot from the intuitive hip here, because the answer is so obvious, but I think it’s more complicated than that. For instance, regular low level exposure to some pathogens might actually make a positive contribution to a chameleon‘s immune system, but I doubt anyone is messing around with the occasional Coccidian oocyst. So, as it turns out, we need to think hard about naturalistic husbandry.
Well, I suppose I’ll start. There’s something intuitive about replicating nature in our husbandry practices, but my sense is that we need to come at it with more critical thought and reflection than it is currently afforded. For instance, wild chameleons are exposed to all sorts of parasites, bacteria/viruses, predators, and environmental stresses such as famine and drought. These hardships have been the ovens that have forged the robust species we see today—allowing those individuals that have survived these challenges to pass on their genes. Does this mean we ought to be exposing our captive chameleons to these conditions? Doesn’t replicating nature mean we should? Obviously these are aspects of nature to which none of us would willingly expose our captive charges. This suggests that we need some principled means of sorting those natural conditions we should be replicating from those we shouldn’t. But no one screaming for naturalistic husbandry presents such a principle.
Maybe we can just shoot from the intuitive hip here, because the answer is so obvious, but I think it’s more complicated than that. For instance, regular low level exposure to some pathogens might actually make a positive contribution to a chameleon‘s immune system, but I doubt anyone is messing around with the occasional Coccidian oocyst. So, as it turns out, we need to think hard about naturalistic husbandry.