Majority of workers have love for the animals here, but the people in charge have always made a money hungry choice over animal health choice when it comes to decisions. Maybe smart choice to start out would be not putting your petting zoo in a...
Read More
Majority of workers have love for the animals here, but the people in charge have always made a money hungry choice over animal health choice when it comes to decisions. Maybe smart choice to start out would be not putting your petting zoo in a mall, but here we are, so let’s get into one topic of issues I will focus on, the reptiles. Some animal husbandry practices due to the amount of animals they have here without enough enclosures or space are outdated, such as cohabiting bearded dragons, spiny tailed lizards, and leopard geckos. I will focus on the leopard geckos for this: Leopard geckos here are the same ones since 2021, except instead of the 7 leopard geckos that used to be here in 2021 it is now down to 4, i know the reasoning behind why the number has dropped and I will not say it here, but i think you may be able to come to your own conclusions on why it is now 4 leopard geckos, not all within the same circumstance but there are reasons behind why not all 7 are still there. The leopard geckos in 2021 did not have dropped tails, now i believe either 3 or all of them have dropped their tails. Leopard geckos do drop their tails and regrow them, but this is caused by being scared or stressed. Peep, the lightest color morph leopard gecko there has dropped her tail multiple times. Pineapple is always lethargic, and Marsha and Leafy have scars on their bodies that were not previously there. They pile on top of each other constantly, and this is a perfect example with physical evidence on why they shouldn’t be together as they are solitary creatures. Leopard geckos can be cohabited and survive at the expense of their comfort, and they /can/ survive like this since they are such hardy animals, which is what higher management like a husbandry director has said when I asked about it, but if it’s going to be interacted with all day, dear god, give those lizards a chance to rest on their own comfortably at least when they get downtime from interactions. The choice of keeping them together is being done with the knowledge of chancing an injury or higher stress to marsha/leafy/peep/pineapple, why even chance an injury to them? These arent just numbers these are 4 unique lizards here. There would be 0% chance of this if they were separated. Why say animal health is priority, but instead of doing actions that show preventative strategies they instead will try to fix things up once they get scratched or bitten by the other lizards. They shouldn’t even be getting injured by each other in the first place. This definitely is not showing comfort over profit. It has been said to me the reasoning behind keeping multiple leopard geckos and other solitary reptiles together are so that if one is hiding, the guest can possibly have a chance to see a different one, but what use is that when what the leopard geckos end up doing is piling on each other in one of their hides? Wouldn’t it make more sense to make one leopard gecko live in comfort enough to the point of them wanting to come out by their own choice rather than have the employee shake them out of where it was hiding whenever someone asks to see them? It basically is showing the leopard gecko that if it comes out, it gets picked up and gets stressed, and i can genuinely say I know those lizards after watching them deteriorate for the past 4 years, none of the leos enjoy their interactions which can be seen through their body language. They cannot speak human, but they are trying so desperately to tell us they do not want to be played with like toys, and when they aren’t squirming to get away its not in a way where they became comfortable, its in a lethargic stressed freeze response. As for the capybara, Westley should have other capybaras to be with, not 2 patagonian cavies. He is getting old, and hasn’t seen another actual capybara in awhile, I just hope he gets to see another one before he passes in a place that isn’t here, but who knows what choice they will make, because they know he will simply survive. Changed name or not: Simply surviving is not the same as thriving.