I’m home from the exotic pet fair. I acquired a Chromatopelma cyaneopubescens! And a Northern Black Widow! They’re young juveniles, now I just have to fatten them up.
Photos will follow once I have them set up.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I am really against this increasing trend, worldwide it seems, of selling non-domestic animals (snakes, marsupials, frogs, insects, fish, birds, spiders etc) as pets. This can and does cause environmental damage as animals are trapped (even the captive bred ones had to start somewhere), causes distress in the confined animals, and instils unhealthy attitudes to wildlife in the owners.
But hey, probably just me, right?
These are not wild-caught spiders, but animals that have been bred in captivity. I’ve talked to the vendor about working together to breed more that ill be shared with the seller.
Knowing you, PZ, I had no doubt that was the case.
I had to look that one up.
It is a colorful tarantula from Venezuela.
Since it is critically endangered, captive bred populations provide a life boat for the species.
Though I’m fine with the tarantula, I’m concerned with the black widow. Years ago there was some show about deadly obsessions where an episode highlighted someone keeping snakes like mambas and did not end well. I trust your taking great care, but do be careful and meticulous. One memory that stands out from my experience in sea turtle biology is someone having brought a jarred black widow into our beach house. Previously during my vert zoo course with the professor a coral snake had been captured and brought back to our university in a van. Kinda scary. I later had a pet ribbon and speckled king I was not scared of. Said professor was nicknamed rattlesnake because reasons. Not my cup of tea.
@5: Are you talking about the Animal Planet show Fatal Attractions? That show was exploitative BS- they deliberately lied about some of the people they featured on the show, like portraying a herpetologist as simply being a deluded snake lover who didn’t understand that the animals she worked with were deadly monsters. It fabricated the “inner thoughts” of dead people in pretty much every episode in order to portray them as ignorant, foolish, and deserving of being killed.
More Mad scientist every day.
@4 “captive bred populations provide a life boat for the species”. No, they really don’t. Stripped out of their habitat and niche, what is being “saved” except genetics? Zoos and captive breeding gives the illusion of conservation. The last Thylacine died in the Hobart Zoo.
It’s not the best situation but sometimes it is the only option a species has left.
The last Przewalski’s horse in the wild died long ago.
Wikipedia: The reintroduced horses successfully reproduced, and the status of the animal was changed from “extinct in the wild” to “endangered” in 2005,[42] while on the IUCN Red List they were reclassified from “extinct in the wild” to “critically endangered” after a reassessment in 2008,[58] and from “critically endangered” to “endangered” after a 2011 reassessment.[54]
…but not a single Australian spider? Chicken!
OT: While we are being all cheerful and optimistic, there has been another shooting in the USA.
Why is this unusual? There is a shooting every few hours after all.
This woman was killed by some creep for having a Pride flag outside. Which BTW, isn’t the least bit unusual in a lot of places including where I live. She wasn’t even gay herself.
It does have a happy ending. He also decided to shoot it out with the cops.
One less Trump voter.
Another attack on a Trans person.
This is happening a lot lately. Attacks on gay and Trans people from MAGAts.
That was well before zoos took on conservation aims – most went for a “one of everything we can get hold of” approach. I agree with raven here – breeding a critically endangered species in captivity is far from ideal, but better than letting it die out altogether.
@12 Hmmm. Or you could just keep DNA in a test tube – that is effectively what you are doing once tou have removed a species from its environment.
@13: Oh, so the reintroduction of Przewalski’s horses, scimitar oraxes, and Tasmanian devils to the wild from captive-bred animals could have been accomplished just by keeping a few test tubes of DNA? You’ve been reading too many stories about cloning mammoths.