• Posted 12/19/2024.
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    I am still waiting on my developer to finish up on the Classifieds Control Panel so I can use it to encourage members into becoming paying members. Google Adsense has become a real burden on the viewing of this site, but honestly it is the ONLY source of income now that keeps it afloat. I tried offering disabling the ads being viewed by paying members, but apparently that is not enough incentive. Quite frankly, Google Adsense has dropped down to where it barely brings in enough daily to match even a single paid member per day. But it still gets the bills paid. But at what cost?

    So even without the classifieds control panel being complete, I believe I am going to have to disable those Google ads completely and likely disable some options here that have been free since going to the new platform. Like classified ad bumping, member name changes, and anything else I can use to encourage this site to be supported by the members instead of the Google Adsense ads.

    But there is risk involved. I will not pay out of pocket for very long during this last ditch experimental effort. If I find that the membership does not want to support this site with memberships, then I cannot support your being able to post your classified ads here for free. No, I am not intending to start charging for your posting ads here. I will just shut the site down and that will be it. I will be done with FaunaClassifieds. I certainly don't need this, and can live the rest of my life just fine without it. If I see that no one else really wants it to survive neither, then so be it. It goes away and you all can just go elsewhere to advertise your animals and merchandise.

    Not sure when this will take place, and I don't intend to give any further warning concerning the disabling of the Google Adsense. Just as there probably won't be any warning if I decide to close down this site. You will just come here and there will be some sort of message that the site is gone, and you have a nice day.

    I have been trying to make a go of this site for a very long time. And quite frankly, I am just tired of trying. I had hoped that enough people would be willing to help me help you all have a free outlet to offer your stuff for sale. But every year I see less and less people coming to this site, much less supporting it financially. That is fine. I tried. I retired the SerpenCo business about 14 years ago, so retiring out of this business completely is not that big if a step for me, nor will it be especially painful to do. When I was in Thailand, I did not check in here for three weeks. I didn't miss it even a little bit. So if you all want it to remain, it will be in your hands. I really don't care either way.

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    Some people have indicated that finding the method to contribute is rather difficult. And I have to admit, that it is not all that obvious. So to help, here is a thread to help as a quide. How to become a contributing member of FaunaClassifieds.

    And for the record, I will be shutting down the Google Adsense ads on January 1, 2025.
  • Responding to email notices you receive.
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    In short, DON'T! Email notices are to ONLY alert you of a reply to your private message or your ad on this site. Replying to the email just wastes your time as it goes NOWHERE, and probably pisses off the person you thought you replied to when they think you just ignored them. So instead of complaining to me about your messages not being replied to from this site via email, please READ that email notice that plainly states what you need to do in order to reply to who you are trying to converse with.

Psychology Today: Sentient Reptiles Experience Mammalian Emotions

Hmm.

Here's the link to the journal article: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/9/10/821/htm

The four listed authors each are employed by "Animal Welfare" sorts of organizations. The word "welfare" appears 48 times in the article; "emotion" appears only 41 times. Hmm.

The article makes it all the way to the third paragraph before the authors swing into talk of the illegal animal trade. Unless a person has an agenda, the legal aspect is irrelevant to determining whether animals experience psychological states.

Picking citations randomly, I notice references to scientifically irrelevant papers:
"The Morality of the Reptile "Pet" Trade" is one that caught my eye (https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/janimalethics.4.1.0074?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents). I'm certainly not badmouthing ethics papers -- my MA and PhD are in ethics -- but they don't have a place here.

There are many cognitive leaps at work here. The title of the Psychology Today article is a statement of alleged fact: "Sentient Reptiles Experience Mammalian Emotions", whereas the referenced paper is "A Review of the Scientific Literature for Evidence of Reptile Sentience". A concluded fact is not equivalent to a lit review.

Continuing the cognitive leaps: in the lit review, "We found 37 studies that assumed reptiles to be capable of the following emotions and states; anxiety, stress, distress, excitement, fear, frustration, pain, and suffering" (emphasis mine). Sure, I assume all sorts of things for purposes of simplifying my life; I 'assume' the thermostat thinks it is too cold in here when it turns on the furnace, but I don't believe the thermostat has mental states. I 'assume' that wasps hate me and are actively hunting me so I steer clear of them, but really they are just on territorial autopilot; they don't feel hatred.

Reading on, they found (only) "four articles that explored and found evidence for the capacity of reptiles to feel pleasure, emotion, and anxiety." I scanned the references and couldn't pick out which those might me, so I can't comment on this evidence. Those four articles might be interesting, but since only four of the articles in all of "four journal databases (ScienceDirect, BioOne, Ingenta Connect, and MDPI) and one open-access journal (PlosOne)" found this, that's a bit tentative.

Full disclaimer: I think that caring properly for captive animals is important and should be promoted, and I also think that at least all vertebrate animals are sentient and feel pain and should not be caused to suffer. I just don't think this article (the Psy Today one, or the one in the journal "Animals") helps.
 
Thanks for the synopsis, John. I suspected the study was crap from the title alone, because mammalian emotions are hard enough to quantify, let alone presume that emotional states of reptiles are the same. I haven't had time to read the paper yet but that is irritating. It's like that terrible study that came out last year talking about snake housing. Every image in their paper was taken by PETA and their sample size was absolute crap, no experimental design or anything.

It's disappointing these papers get published. It's not even science, it's just anthromorphication fluff.
 
snowgyre said:
I suspected the study was crap from the title alone, because mammalian emotions are hard enough to quantify, let alone presume that emotional states of reptiles are the same.
Click to expand...

Yup, this is what set off my BS detector, too.

Luckily in this case it is pretty easy to show the weak reasoning and bias of the journal article, and clickbaity inaccuracy of the magazine article. Sometimes it takes a whole lot of scientific knowledge (which I don't have) to uncover this stuff.

It is fair to say that in most cases a person ought to go to the original journal article to confirm the claims of a magazine or news article; even where there isn't some intentional hoodwinking going on, I don't think that most journalists can interpret scientific journal articles very well (no criticism there -- good journalists are crucial to a well-functioning society; I just think scientific research has gotten too rarified to simplify readily).
 
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