AN OVERVIEW OF THE PET HERPETOFAUNA TRADE IN ENGLAND FROM 2016-2021

The purpose of this study was to attempt to quantify the herpetofauna (reptile and amphibian) trade across England and investigate the level of husbandry advice available for beginner owners. Over the past two decades there has been a large increase in keeping herpetofauna as pets and the UK trade alone is worth some £200 million per year. Herpetofauna are widely available across pet shops, online forums, classified websites, and social media with much of the online sales largely unregulated. Reliable data on the numbers and different species within the trade does not exist as there are no legal obligations for vendors to record and share the information. There are also largely conflicting opinions on the suitability of herpetofauna as pets, coupled with a lack of peer-reviewed scientific studies on their complex biology. This, along with limited specialist veterinary services, can cause an over-reliance on ‘folk’ husbandry whereby anecdotal knowledge is shared between keepers. Concerns highlighted by vets and animal welfare organisations is that this means some outdated ideas surrounding herpetofauna care may remain in circulation. Vets report seeing herpetofauna with health issues that are often because of poor husbandry which tends to be caused by novice owners. Previous research highlighted that beginner reptile owners trust advice given by vendors above all other sources of information, although there is limited data available on what this advice looks like. This study firstly investigated the range and number of species for sale across physical and online pet shops and online classified adverts located in England. A total of 158 physical pet shops were visited over the period of one year across 47 mainland ceremonial counties of England. A further four online shops based in England were visited via their websites. A total of 350 different reptile species and 117 different amphibian species were recorded following these visits. Four popular classified websites were visited every week for a period of 49 months to harvest a total of 117,001 unique adverts selling herpetofauna using a ‘web scraping’ tool. A total of 660 different reptile species and 141 different amphibian species were found across these online classified adverts. When combining the data from these different sources there was a total of 700 unique reptile species and 172 unique amphibian species. Further analysis of data was done via processing online classified adverts with a novel expert system (PetExSys) that incorporated machine learning and subsequent querying an SQL database. Over the 49-month period, adverts selling the most commonly kept reptile species proportionately show a gradual downward trend which was caused by an increase in the range of less commonly kept species advertised. Adverts selling axolotls and certain gecko species showed a noticeable upward trend. Adverts (n=54,486) that were commercial trade or possible commercial trade were categorised, with 36.9% of these deemed commercial, 62.8% potentially commercial, and 0.3% deemed a rescue / rehoming organisation. The remaining adverts (n= 62,515) not assigned to a group were then determined to be private sellers. Geographical trade hot spots were identified using the locations of adverts (via post code) which were Torbay (Devon), Plymouth (Devon), Basildon (Essex), and Chesterfield (Derbyshire). However, this analysis also showed that advert locations were widespread across the whole of England, with slightly more prevalence in mid-sized towns and the least prevalence in majorly urbanised areas. Adverts that came from classified websites that were Pet Advertising Advisory Group (PAAG) members were checked for violations of its minimum standards, with 43-47% of adverts breaking these rules. However, a chi squared test of association found that there was a significant difference (p = 0.0001) in the number of adverts that violated these rules when comparing PAAG member websites with non-PAAG member websites. Non-PAAG members were 2.71 times more likely than PAAG members to have adverts that violated the rules as determined by an odds-ratio test (OR = 0.36, 95% CI [0.35, 0.39]). The remaining adverts (n= 62,515) deemed to be private sellers were analysed to determine reasons for re-sale / relinquishment. Of those that gave a reason (n=26,278), the most common were ‘lack of time’, followed by ‘home move’, ‘collection reduction’, ‘child lost interest’, and ‘change of circumstances’. Deeper analysis also found these reasons sometimes changed depending on the species for sale. This study also investigated what advice is available from physical pet shops when visiting as a prospective beginner owner. Of the 158 visits to physical pet shops, 146 of these were also interviewed using a covert mystery shopper model to record the advice given to a beginner reptile owner in a range of shop and business types when enquiring with 10 questions based around the care of four different species (one species per shop on a rotation). Advice given was then compared with RSPCA care sheets as benchmarks and scored to determine how similar or different this was, and where there were mixed answers between shops on the same topic. An ordinal regression analysis found the type of shop overall had a near-significant effect on the shop interview scores (p = 0.082), however the odds of an Aquatics shop getting as high a score compared to a Reptile specialist shop were 4.50 times lower (95% CI, .065 to .761), a statistically significant effect (p = 0.017). Multiple Chi squared goodness-of-fit tests showed where advice contradicted benchmarks, mainly surrounding environmental requirements, whether animals can be aggressive, and whether owners should register with a vet. Further multiple Chi squared goodness-of-fit tests showed where advice was mixed between shops on certain topics, mainly surrounding environmental fixtures and fittings. These findings address several gaps in knowledge surrounding the herpetofauna trade across England, both in regulated shops and via unregulated classified websites. Findings suggest that the type of shop visited makes a difference to what advice is available and highlights several contradictions and mixed opinions on certain aspects of reptile husbandry. A comprehensive data set highlights the wide range and abundance of different herpetofauna species which gives further justification to address the gaps in peer-reviewed herpetofauna health and welfare research, as each species available to keep in captivity will come with specialist biological requirements.