So all tortoises in captivity have a "Marty the zebra" complex?
That is incontestable, I agree 101%...A lot of people are more guilty of anthropormorphizing than they care to admit.
dmmj said:You know if the "aliens" provided 2 or more females for each male, that might not be a bad thing.
mira_kaylee said:Friend, I understand where you're coming from, that everything is born wanting to be free, even captive born animals, but....it just seems to me like...well, how could they miss something that they've never had? I'm far from an expert, but my tortoise Ayden (my female tort, Azura, is still getting used to me I'd imagine as I've had her for less than a year) seems very happy to see me everytime I go near him....when I take him to his outside enclosure and come outside he will follow me around, when I sit down he will either sit under my chair or beside me, I get comments all the time from other people saying how Ayden acts almost like a clingy child with the way that he behaves (which is fine by me, mind you). It could be that I'm missing something I suppose, but to me it doesn't seem like Ayden really wants to be anywhere else.....(take into account that he could also be the exception rather than the rule - Ayden doesn't act like most tortoises, or so I've been told by other tort-owners)
Tom said:To suggest that a captive born animal has some sort of instinctive memory of what it was like in the wild is ridiculous. Completely absurd. To suggest that they "yearn" for freedom the way a human does is non-sense.
To answer the original question again: YES. It is completely "ethical" to keep reptiles as pets. I say this with a renewed sense of purpose after returning from the TTPG conference and being reminded of the plight of so many species in the wild. Keeping my reptiles, to the standard I keep them, is COMPLETELY within my code of ethics.
bigred said:mira_kaylee said:Friend, I understand where you're coming from, that everything is born wanting to be free, even captive born animals, but....it just seems to me like...well, how could they miss something that they've never had? I'm far from an expert, but my tortoise Ayden (my female tort, Azura, is still getting used to me I'd imagine as I've had her for less than a year) seems very happy to see me everytime I go near him....when I take him to his outside enclosure and come outside he will follow me around, when I sit down he will either sit under my chair or beside me, I get comments all the time from other people saying how Ayden acts almost like a clingy child with the way that he behaves (which is fine by me, mind you). It could be that I'm missing something I suppose, but to me it doesn't seem like Ayden really wants to be anywhere else.....(take into account that he could also be the exception rather than the rule - Ayden doesn't act like most tortoises, or so I've been told by other tort-owners)
Yep sometimes you get a tort like that