Wild animals are best left where they belong
Moe Milstein, Vancouver Sun
Published: Monday, April 03, 2006
My son, Jonathan, came home from university with a degree and a leftover roommate. Jonathan looked a little hollow-cheeked and thin, but nothing that a little home cooking wouldn't fix.
His roommate, Diego, on the other hand, was a wreck. His jaw was swollen and one leg looked a bit odd. He was green around the gills. That's the good part. He is supposed to be green. He is a juvenile Green Iguana.
In spite of my warnings, Jonathan and his roommates had decided that adding an iguana to the collegiate chaos that prevailed in their house was a neat idea. They did their best -- followed my advice, found good information on the Internet -- but Diego still developed one of the more common diseases of captive iguanas, metabolic bone disease (MBD). His bones, soft and fragile, were in danger of breaking merely from the strain of supporting his weight. His rubbery jaw was misshapen from the pull of the muscle attachments.
The disease is caused by a lack of calcium, but that is only part of the story. To integrate the calcium into the bones where it's needed, vitamin D is required. But adding vitamin D and calcium to the diet is still not enough. Iguanas need sunlight to make usable vitamin D.
The boys knew this and they bought a special ultraviolet lamp to irradiate Diego and they shone the light into his "condo" -- a tall bookcase with a clear plastic cover -- but Diego still developed metabolic bone disease.
They didn't know that not all UV lamps have the right wavelength; that most expire after one year even though they keep shining; that they needed to coordinate the light with the heat so that Diego could bask as in the wild; that he needed to warm up before feeding, and to be fed at certain times of the day; that, in any case, UV light doesn't penetrate plastic; that, although they had no money to turn on the furnace, Diego was a tropical creature and his hot rock was a poor substitute for blazing sunny days; that he needed a certain relative humidity in his environment; and that he needed 12 hours of darkness and sleep, even during party nights.
Diego's case illustrates that, even with the best intentions, keeping reptiles as pets taxes the abilities of most people. The domestic animals we commonly keep as pets are mammals, able to tolerate a wide range of conditions, and since we are mammals too, we share a certain intuitive knowledge of their needs.
Reptiles, by contrast, are cold-blooded animals whose physiology is dominated by their environment. Theirs is a world of narrow limits of temperature, humidity, sunlight, food and behaviour. Failure to meet these requirements usually means disease or death for the animal.
Our warm-blooded pets have been domesticated for centuries if not millennia to live in the company of man. Reptiles and amphibians are wild animals. Even those bred in captivity are still essentially wild animals. Captivity does not change their physiology or their behavioural needs.
Most of the sick and dying reptiles brought to veterinarians are suffering from diseases brought on by inadequate knowledge of the animal's basic living requirements. Not only do we see iguanas with metabolic bone disease but turtles with rotting shells, snakes with blistered skin and starving chameleons, newts, boas, caimans and whatever happens to be the novelty pet-of-the-week at pet stores. Of the 15 million turtles sold in the U.S. annually, most live only two months after purchase.
And the damage to exotic animals begins even before they end up in someone's house. Populations in the wild are depleted by the export trade. Many die during transport.
The Canadian Veterinary Medical Association "endorses the keeping of only domestic animals as pets."
Diego is better now, but the best way to keep wild animals is where they belong: in the wild.
Dr. Moe Milstein runs the Blueridge-Cove Animal Hospital in North Vancouver.
© The Vancouver Sun 2006