Just spotted this in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/16/disease-causing-mass-deaths-frogs-reaches-britain-aoe
Oh, no! As if our amphibians didn’t have enough to cope with.
The opening sentence to the article states, a "disease that causes mass die-offs in frogs has been found in captive UK populations for the first time2 - who would keep a frog captive?
I’m always surprised and a bit dismayed by the exotic things that people think it’s ok to keep as pets… It really can’t help with the spread of disease.
As Sarah says, people keep all sorts of things as pets. Remember the Saffron Walden Cobra? That was a “pet” that escaped back in the 60s (I think), it was never found. In the 80s, there was a huge effort to eradicate a population of American Bullfrogs, arising from escapes from a garden pond, originally bought from a garden centre.
Late in his working life, my father ran a council canteen, based in a Victorian city-centre terrace. One day, the owner of the adjacent pet shop asked if he could go down into the cellar. He was missing, he explained, a couple of pythons…
People are mad, aren’t they? There was a guy a couple of years ago who was asphyxiated by his pet python…
I recall reading (circa 1990) of an amazing medical paper, entitled something like: “failure of electric shock therapy in Crotalus envenomation”. To this day, I suspect it was an urban myth, possibly published on 1st April.
True or not, it wove 2 amazing stories into one, though the details are lost in time.
There was a myth that the shock from a petrol engine HT lead could be used in the wilderness to treat snakebite. Yes, I know: a bit unlikely. But it was recalled by an urban American, who was in the habit of showing his bravado by kissing his pet rattlesnake: one day, the inevitable happened. He tried it, using the plug lead from his motorcycle. Some while later, he was admitted to hospital suffering from snake bite and 3rd degree facial burns.
I’ve just looked that paper up (I get access through work, which is handy); astonishingly, it’s completely genuine. It sounds like that guy was one of many who tried it, and the authors really wanted to knock the practice on the head before someone killed themselves; the paper says ‘This treatment was publicized in Outdoor Life and other publications. A modified stun gun to treat not only snakebites but also stings from scorpions and insects was developed and marketed. By 1990, at least 7,000 stun guns modified to reduce voltage to 20 to 25 kV had been sold in the United States for the treatment of snakebite.’ They were banned in the US in 1990, but it was obviously a craze that had taken off. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Bleach injection against Covid-19, anyone?
However I think there are small electric devices to treat insect bites and have seen people who swear by them.
I’ve used one of those - they’re very cheap, so I thought I’d try it. If you’re trying to photograph invertebrates, it seems silly to slap on repellents! Possibly it’s psychological, but it does seem to have some effect if applied promptly. It’s of little use against mozzie bites you don’t notice, but on cleg bites 2 or 3 “zaps” do seem to help.
‘mass mortality event’ - I do love scientific jargon!
All the evidence suggests that transferring animal and plant species around the world is hazardous at best - there are numerous examples of catastrophic consequences.