Even worse: what happens if his snakes bite someone else?
Keep in mind that it doesn't take many snakes escaping for it to become an invasive species. Colombia's entire hippo population came from 4 animals owned by a drug dealer. So it is possible that it was a zoo releasing 2 or 3 of those snakes, or a private owner throwing them away. And I know a lot of private owners do this because I've had to work with a whole bunch of slider turtles that were released in a nearby lake by different people
Any venomous or poisonous animal should be chipped and regulated, regardless of how potent the venom is. Specially if the animal is not a native species, not because of the possibility of becoming invasive but because animals that aren't native don't usually have antivenom readily available in the country and people being allowed to freely buy them can cause an immense shitstorm in the future.
I am tempted to say that bearded dragons are more or less "domesticated" by now.
Are you implying that Oddjob is a keeper of venomous reptiles? Their point is that regulators are politicians and are usually horribly educated at best on topics that require someone to have a lot of it. If you've got a rear fanged snake that has incredibly mild venom, is it going to be considered just as dangerous as a viper? Are they even going to care about keeping this specifically to medically significant animals at all, or just blanket ban ones that look scary? How can you trust that the backstabbers in government with room temperature IQs aren't going to ignore anything actual experts say?
Not only that, but exotic animals are mistreated and abused beyond belief by owners that simply don't understand the animals needs and don't know any better. Even if the animal is a nice pet to have. Happens a lot with birds and turtles/tortoises.
Blanket regulating anything venomous is probably better than allowing anyone to own a black mamba. I don't see any reason for a person to keep venomous snakes as a hobby anyway.
Being really underestimate the level of knowledge animal care takes. They also apply how more common pets like dogs and cats and their ability to adapt to humans and meet us half way to animals that do not have the capacity to do that. It's very frustrating. And people like Jeff feed into those attitudes. People like him pretend it's people being scaredy-cats and ignorant that they don't keep the animals he does the way he does but there are good reasons common pets are common and not something like a fucking serval. RIP that poor kitty.
That story made me sad, if he couldnt bother to keep his snakes in proper and clean enclosures, imagine how badly that serval was treated.
Blanket bans are how you get boneheaded laws like the MBTA. There'd have to be a minimum threshold of toxicity, because most lizards and every snake (anything in the clade Toxicofera) is either venomous to some degree, or had an ancestor that was. Even bearded dragons have venom glands - granted, it's a very weak cocktail that's only really capable of subduing large insects, but it's still venom.
I can agree with keeping a specific list, some states do that for dangerous dogs so it wouldn't be anything new. It will be a pretty long list tho.
If these hobbyist are so serious about this shit they can form their own private regulatory and advising organization. Private Zoos have the Zoological Association of America as an example. It sets basic guidelines like how certain animals should be housed, how they should (or should not) interact with the public, veterinary support requirements, feeding, housing and so on. These organizations not only provide a liability shield by setting standards, they also help inform braindead politicians when it comes to passing laws about shit, such as appropriate enclosures for chimps or big cats.
I'm not sure if this really applies to the smaller, dumber reptiles, but while it has long been thought that the reptilian brain wasn't capable of the sort of complex behaviors mammals have, the crocodilians in particular turn out to be a lot more intelligent than previously thought, being capable of cooperative hunting and other behaviors indicative of being capable of thinking and planning.
You should also be forced to have vast amounts of insurance to cover the strict liability applied to those who keep inherently dangerous animals. This should be in the millions. Underwriters will not underwrite for a mammoth retard like this Leibowitz faggot.
The problem with this is that you risk either having gigantic thousands of pages long laws just on snakes, plus if you forget to put something on there, some moron will go get that exact thing, because being that specific in law with an enormous list inherently implies that anything not prohibited is permitted.
This is not actually true, We have a lot of pythons, our largest land predator is a dog and ok in the rivers we have crocs and bullsharks but so does America. America also has plenty of deadly snakes, probably even more than Australia, you also have spiders and huge land animals like moose and deer which are comparable to kangaroos and probably more dangerous with their antlers.
It's not really that easy because a lot of venomous snakes that can kill people aren't considered medically significant because they rarely bite people. Mostly snakes from isolated areas where no one lives.
Regulations aside, this is something that should have happened yesterday, having an inland taipan in a simple neighborhood in north carolina is not only a danger to the idiot that brought it but to everyone around him. These hobbyists rarely, if ever have those australian/african/asian snake antivenin doses available, even the "responsible ones", and this makes me really MATI.
