Why have a pet amphibian? insights from youtube
Date
2019-03-04
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Frontiers
Abstract
The desire to own a pet amphibian is growing, and with it a growth in amphibian trade and in negative impacts on native populations, including disease transmission and invasive amphibian populations. We know very little about how or why people choose amphibians as pets, but amphibian owners share large numbers of videos on freely accessible platforms, such as YouTube. We aimed to use videos of captive amphibians to determine which species are kept, their life-history stage and the types of videos uploaded. We watched and categorized 1,162 videos by video type, type of amphibian behavior and amphibian taxonomy (superfamily, family, and species). We used data on the amphibian trade from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), on conservation status from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list, and on potential environmental impact
from published Environmental Impact Classification of Alien Taxa (EICAT) records, to determine potential conflicts of owning pet amphibians. We recorded 173 captive species in 847 videos with a taxonomic overrepresentation of salamandroids and pipoids, and
an underrepresentation of ranoids and plethodontoids. When compared to videos of wild amphibian species, videos of captive animals featured disproportionate amounts of adults feeding, being handled and moving. The videos watched had a smaller proportion
of threatened amphibian species, but a higher proportion of invasive species, than would be expected by chance, with the proportion present in CITES appendices (18%) being non-significant. We suggest that such data can be used to profile potential pets for trade
and attempt to avoid conflicts with threatened and highly impacting alien species.
Description
CITATION: Measey, J. et al. 2019. Why have a pet amphibian? Insights from YouTube. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 7:52, doi:10.3389/fevo.2019.00052.
The original publication is available at https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/ecology-and-evolution
The original publication is available at https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/ecology-and-evolution
Keywords
Anura, Caudata, Gymnophiona, Amphibian trade, Invasive species, Amphibian populations, Amphibians as pets -- Health aspects
Citation
Measey, J. et al. 2019. Why have a pet amphibian? Insights from YouTube. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 7:52, doi:10.3389/fevo.2019.00052.