People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is going to bat for Colorado’s squirmiest population — pet snakes, which the advocacy group says need larger enclosures and stronger protection in the pet trade.
They made their plea at the Colorado Department of Agriculture’s rulemaking hearing Thursday on proposed changes to regulations in the Pet Animal Care and Facilities Act, a licensing and inspection program dedicated to protecting the health and well-being of animals in pet stores and other facilities throughout Colorado.
PETA and other snake allies are urging the department to change current rules requiring snake enclosures to be half as long as a snake’s body to ones long enough for the animals to stretch to their full length — a condition essential to their health and well-being, according to experts.
“Snakes are individuals with unique wants and needs just like any cat or dog, but the Colorado Department of Agriculture’s proposed rules would allow snakes to be crammed into tiny boxes only half the length of their bodies, never able to fully stretch out,” PETA General Counsel Lori Kettler said in a press release. “PETA is calling on the department to listen to subject matter experts whose recommendations are based on scientific evidence-based research and require enclosures that give snakes the space they need to be afforded basic welfare.”
Colorado snake lovers aren’t as rare as one might think, given the fact that over the past 60 million years the human brain has developed a “special corner” dedicated to fearing and avoiding them, experts say. That’s good for humans who like Colorado’s outdoors, because they’re riddled with rattlers born in places like a megaden complex up north where hundreds hibernate through the winter and the females give birth to five to 17 snaklets per litter. That’s a lot of snakes and a lot of venom: The average bite contains between 75 and 125 milligrams (dry weight), but can deliver up to 590 mg in a single bite.
You can’t own a venomous snake in Colorado but plenty of people have rattler skins on their fireplace mantles and some lucky ones find the actual rattles. But captive snakes don’t always have it as good as the prairie, Western and massasauga rattlers common across Colorado. Another 26 or 27 snake species here aren’t venomous.
Wild snakes are lucky, because they can slither to their instinct’s content and stretch at whim to their full length. And peer-reviewed studies make it clear that to be psychologically and physically healthy, captive snakes must have the same ability to stretch out their bodies, or they’ll experience health problems like injuries, illnesses, joint disease, constipation and obesity, PETA says.
But “pseudo-science and outdated practices” perpetuate the belief that snakes can exist happily in enclosures that limit their movement and dexterity, reptile biologist Clifford Warwick said at the Thursday hearing.
“I’ve seen firsthand experience of snakes in these conditions,” said Gabe Buckley, a captive wildlife advocacy specialist who has worked as an animal care technician at the USDA National Wildlife Research Center in Fort Collins.
“They sometimes pace around the edges of the cage, pretty desperate, pretty bored, looking for any way out, looking for any sort of stimulation. Other snakes just stop moving entirely. They quit exploring the small space they have available to them, and they become very obese. Reptile care is more complex than a lot of the mammals that we have regulations on, and so they should have just as strict requirements. And the 50% rule has no basis in science.”
That’s why the Colorado Reptile Humane Society and University of Denver Sturm College of Law joined PETA in calling for stronger protections.
“If you think about it, people would never, never, ever, ever put up with somebody keeping their dog in a crate 24/7 that didn’t allow it to stand up, or turn around, or anything like that, which is the case for most of these snakes, and there’s no reason to treat them differently,” said Kettler. “I mean, they’re sentient. They suffer and experience pain to the same extent as the cats and dogs we share our homes with.”
