Parents: Put the Brakes on Snakes, Says PETA
For Immediate Release:
November 17, 2020
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
With the holiday shopping season just around the corner—and because the captive-reptile industry continues to market snakes inaccurately as “starter pets”—PETA is alerting parents to the dangers of buying these complex animals as presents with the following information:
- Snakes have highly specialized needs—they require precise spectrum lighting, heat, humidity, and food as well as complex, enriching enclosures that are longer than their bodies in which they can bask, burrow, and explore.
- Snakes naturally shun human contact, and being handled and kept in barren glass enclosures can leave them prone to illness and injury.
- At least 75% of pet reptiles, including snakes, die within one year—the majority from stress related to captivity.
- Most reptiles are captured and taken out of their native wild habitats and then sold by breeders en masse. A PETA investigation of California dealer Global Captive Breeders revealed small drawers filled with maggots, starving and dying snakes, and snakes’ rotting carcasses.
“In the wild, snakes warm themselves in the sun, burrow underground, swim and climb trees, and travel long distances—and they suffer immensely when they’re relegated to cramped glass tanks,” says PETA Senior Vice President Daphna Nachminovitch. “PETA is urging people to keep snakes off their wish lists.”
More information about PETA’s lawsuit is available here.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
