Poll: is handling herps for iNat ethical?

The topic, in my opinion, is not about just handling reptiles or amphibians, but handling them for iNat. This means handling them to take photos and share them. Sharing photos of wildlife handling without proper context (rescuing, research, etc.) gives the idea that it’s ok to do it. This encourages wildlife selfie tourism.

6 Likes

I often catch and handle green anoles and Mediterranean house geckos when they come inside my mother’s house or mine.

I’ll photograph them for iNaturalist before releasing them outside.

I plan to continue to do so for their safety (my mom has a cat and a dog, we both have vaccuums and other hazards), but now I’m wondering how I can do it better to further minimize stress. There’s a lot of comments about safe handling that seem to assume all the people reading this thread already know what that entails.
Can anyone recommend some guides, or offer some advice?

1 Like

My initiation into nature study and a career as a biologist was by catching herps as a kid. Still enjoy it occasionally today. I wouldn’t deny that to some youngster who might be developing an interest in biology. Yes, there are concerns today about transmission of chytrid fungus in amphibians and snake fungal disease in many snakes. Also more attention to how capture and handling might stress these animals. But given all the other stressors and impacts that herpetofauna have to contend with today, I strongly doubt that a small number of naturalists who might take a minute to pose a snake or frog for a photo before letting it continue on is a major issue.

1 Like

I use a tub, like a sandwich meat tub, cup, or clear ice cream tubs and place it over the animal and slide a paper under it. I do this with all of the little critters that come in our house and I can easily take close up pictures, plus it makes it easy to release them. This is especially helpful with animals that might bite such as spiders, scorpions, etc.

2 Likes

I chose “depends” so here’s my comment. First, I’ll say I tend to avoid handling herps and other organisms. However, I sometimes dig up snakes in my garden and want to show them to my wife (or rarely visitors). For that purpose, I don’t see a problem. I can understand how, like handling bird nests, some people would consider it unethical. Scientists certainly need to handle organisms, so the “depends” issue is obviously one that applies, especially for rare or poisonous species. I agree that handling probably endangers the animal, so if I’m in the forest and turn over rocks and logs to find snakes and lizard, I try to not handle them even though disturbing their habitat is just as bad. However, not documenting what occurs where from a scientific point of view is also a problem. As I said about plants on US Forest Service (where I worked) or other public lands, if you don’t know what you have, how can you be sure everything is adequately protected?

1 Like

Oh, I do that with arthropods!
Now that you’ve said it, it seems so obvious.
I don’t know why it never occurred to me to do it with vertebrates too.

2 Likes

I am confused by your interpretation of “ethics”. What does it mean for you? For me ethics is about values, fairness, and responsibility. If there is a concern of health and safety, then to me it clearly becomes one of ethical consideration.

2 Likes

Here - ethical in terms of animal welfare

2 Likes

My post was not intended to communicate my “interpretation” of ethics. It was intended to remind people that, whatever their opinion on the ethics ot handling herpetofauna, there are superceding reasons to refrain from, or minimize, indulgence in said activity. The question of handling wildlife doesn’t simply start and end with whether or not someone considers it okay to do so.

8 Likes

I don’t see the link between wildlife selfie tourism and iNaturalist. Yes, people do this. And people regularly trample patches of breeding plants to get their “Easter Photos” or photos of babies in wildflowers. As for people trying to take selfies with a real wild anaconda, that’s a mistake they would only make once ;-). It wouldn’t be much of a selfie covered in snake feces and your own blood from the bites. LOL.

I do think about the degree of harassment than some iNatted plants and animals go through to get iNatted. Sure some people handle reptiles and amphians, some scoop fish and other aquatics out of the water, some stalk birds and mammals with a camera until they finally flush from their resting place. I think we need to be more sensitive about the stress we put on our targets (and bycatch) in order to add things to iNat.

But I think the scientific and educational value of iNaturalist may have a price. Maybe that’s the price.

6 Likes

There’s a tourism agency that markets itself with expeditions to catch anacondas here in Peru. As far as I know, they are not doing any actual research and they also have no permit to capture/handle them. If they are doing it for research, they never mention it. It’s just anaconda selfies for foreigners who pay extra for the experience.

3 Likes

That’s sad. :-(

3 Likes

To me the only possible answer is “it depends”. If I already have an animal in hand to move off the road, might as well take a picture of it while it’s restrained and I know I can get a diagnostic shot. I’m not sure putting it on iNat changes the ethical implication there.

I also think, from my experience, that some species tend to much more tolerant of handling than others. I won’t touch amphibians; chytrid fungus scares the hell of me to the point I bleached wiped my kid’s shoes and had them change pants between locations on this past trip (we weren’t really herping but we did see some stuff; mostly playing in uncrowded parts of the Lower Rio Grande and Hill Country–played in some stretches of the Colorado and Perdenales). But while it’s not necessary, I’m not going to rag on someone for handling, say, a bullsnake where legal to do so in order to get a photo of it. I personally am leery of people catching most of our lizards though; I’ve seen a lot of tail drops from people doing so and that hurts survival and reproductive capacity.

5 Likes

I went with the “Depends on the Case” answer. I have a good friend that does herp research and he told something that helps guide my behavior. Whenever you find an animal in the wild, it’s most often doing things it needs to survive. And since he worked with snakes, he’d say “It’s on important snake business.”

I don’t handle herps often. I try to get a photo without handling. I will handle herps if I want to show/teach someone about it. The family rule for handling is everyone can handle 1 individual per outing if they feel the need. We have pathogens impacting numerous species and don’t want to be a vector.

8 Likes

I love that! My mantra has become “Tread Lightly”, but I think I need to factor that “Important snake business” one in as well

4 Likes

At minimum, don’t let the your skin touch the amphibian’s skin.

2 Likes

What I always do if I take a group herping who have never been herping before is I tell them that they can only handle something if I tell them that they can. I also always make sure to tell them about the safest way for both them and the herp to handle it, and that for the most part it’s usually a good idea to just let them be, and to only handle it (this applies more toward snakes) if they have a 100% positive ID on it and if not moving the snake could cause injury for the snake or others. I also always make sure to tell them that it’s always either have wet hands or gloves on when handling amphibians.

2 Likes

I think generally handling a reptile is fine, I definitely don’t try to catch every reptile I come across, but from time to time I’ll pick some one up, especially if it’s a species I’ve never encountered before. I don’t think the short-term stress from being captured is likely to have any long-term effect on the animal, and unless you’re capturing reptiles back-to-back I think the odds of disease transmission between individuals is fairly low. Reptiles living near each other are likely to encounter the same pathogens in their environment anyway. Road-cruising for snakes over a large area is a different matter, but the benefit of moving the snake off the road probably outweighs the risk of passing along a disease. Fortunately snake fungal disease hasn’t hit my area yet, that may change when and if it does.

I do think it’s important to know how to handle a reptile safely, but I think in most scenarios the greatest risk to the animal is going to come from people causing lizards to drop their tails, because of the health impact others have mentioned. I see a lot of photos on here of people dangling fence lizards and anoles by their tails, and I’m astonished the lizards in the photos aren’t dropping them in those scenarios. I usually try to leave a comment on those observations advising against holding lizards that way. Unfortunately the only way most people are going to learn where to grab a lizard to cause it to not tail-drop is through experience, I certainly caused lots of lizards to lose their tails when I was a kid. It’s tricky to get that reflex to release the grab if it’s too far down the body.

6 Likes

I try to grab behind the head when I need to relocate anoles outdoors. This was less due to any knowledge on my part, and more because I still remember as a kid when green anole would swing their heads around to clamp down on the webbing between index finger and thumb.

I doubt it would hurt me now, but old habits die hard and I remember it seemed like a wickedly painful pinch back then…especially from big ones who didn’t immediately release their jaw’s grip on my body when I released my hand’s grip around theirs. :)

For a while after that, child-me would only try to catch smaller anoles (an object lesson in “once bitten, twice shy”), or ask my fearless younger sibling to do it for me.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.