FaunaClassifieds - View Single Post - Venomoids, the right and the wrong.
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Old 03-21-2012, 07:21 AM   #126
GQMedic
By and large, I am going to preach to the choir, and as to venomoids, why own a hot that's not?

"The cool factor" as I call it, a dangerous thing really, yet predominant if you watch youtube enough, there are some risky hot collectors out there, yet, hot keepers are attracted to hot snakes or we wouldn't have them. There is a beauty in the animals themselves, and there is the beauty of how they eat and live, the power of their venom, the excitement to a hot keeper is intoxicating, memorizing, you could spend your whole life studying just ONE hot snake, and it would not be a wasted pursuit.

The "Not so cool factor", enter the venomoid, the hot that's not. Direct interference with how the animal lives and eats through an invasive surgical procedure that renders the snake into something else IMHO. These aren't fuzzy bunnies to hug and kiss. There are no shortage of species that are NOT hot that one can "snuggle up to" without a "kiss of death". What is the excitement of a venomoid, a mere shell of what it once was, one might as well own a dead and stuffed hot snake. There is a total lack of study in the true nature of the animal, a lack of admiration and respect for a truly magnificent animal.

I own hots for the awe they inspire in me, such grace, such power, so deadly, utterly beautiful. I feed live prey, not because I find joy in the suffering of a rodent, but to observe the complexity of the venom delivery, the behavior of the prey animal and the snake, the amalgam of the equation between predator and prey. The consumption of it's food that sustains it, doing so for the years from yearling to elderly adult in the last days of it's life cycle. Watching it grow to maturity, comparing information as to it's growth, diet, venom response in prey animals, the time between bite and death of it's prey. There is a solid fascination in hot herp keepers in the fact that our animals are in fact HOT. How can you truly have a love affair with a HOT that is NOT?

Well, there are my ramblings, for that they're worth. YMMV