Mark, you forgot to mention a critical point. Dogs are EVIL.
There is a great deal of misunderstanding about the herp world, we all know this. However, it has to be said that a great deal of the missunderstanding happens inside the amphibian-reptile keeping community. Of course the generalizations made in the article are absurd and simply untrue, but as asfouts said, that doesn´t mean we can ignore all the bad things and pat ourselves in the back thinking that just because the article is untrue, we are golden.
There are a lot of things that are very wrong with the hobby, at a general level most of them are intrinsically related to the mass production of aberrants. Not only does this disregard genetic fitness, by promoting aesthetics based selection and massive inbreeding, but it also promotes maintaining animals in bare minimum conditions (the best example are the well known racks). The other gigantic problem that to me is quite possibly the main source of animal suffering is the pet-trade and in this case i´m including both WC and CB animals.
It is easy for most of us to recognize those problems, particularly the issue of animals suffering in bad conditions at pet-shops, shows, etc.
However, we rarely consider our individual responsabilities seriously. I´m enormously glad that a significant fraction of the hobby is responsible and dedicated enough to provide captive conditions that are perfectly adequate and allow for high welfare standards. The problem is that usually this ends here. There is very little awareness about how domestication can negatively affect welfare. I find this really strange because this happens to the point where people will disregard or ignore obvious problems. This happens with every single domestic species, from dogs to cattle to poultry and canaries. The way we breed captive animals and the criteria we apply for selection (domestication) are phenomena responsible for a great deal of suffering. I think it´s worth emphasizing this because this is entirely our fault and our responsability, and we are failing misserably.
Captive reptiles and amphibians, which are indeed being domesticated, are being exposed to terrible standards of selection and massive levels of inbreeding with little or no positive selection. There is a huge price to be paid for this and it´s the animals who pay that price. If you are a hobbyist that claims to care about welfare, you have a responsability to consider the welfare implications of your practices, not just at a husbandry or dietary level.
I would hope that more and more people realize this, because as i said, there´s a lot more suffering to come otherwise.
