Questioning the “Herper” Mentality

I’ve been keeping this new little experimental blog fairly light and fun, but I think this is an issue that needs a more serious approach. I’ll likely offend a lot of people but I hope a few will actually hear me out and think about it.

I have occasional encounters with  self-described “herpers,” and it rarely goes well.  Today I contacted one online because he had posted a video of himself  harassing and abusing a gopher snake, repeatedly poking and grabbing at the terrified animal, and at one point grabbing her by the tail and swinging her around his body. It was pretty horrific. Yet the individual in question, a young man who was clearly an inexperienced handler, kept professing how “awesome” the snake was. He also described her as aggressive and claimed that her defensive behavior was “unprovoked.” I hate to let that sort of misinformation stand, so I commented on the video, noting that the defensive behavior was not unprovoked but a response to his sudden close approach, and that by dangling the snake  by her tail he was likely to cause  spinal or neurological injury to her.

Now, a guy who actually loved snakes might have reacted by saying something like, “I didn’t realize it could injure the snake. I won’t do that anymore.”  But this one didn’t. Instead, he threw a screaming tantrum in response, accusing me of having a messiah complex and saying that herpers have been handling snakes this way for years and no over-sensitive  YouTuber was going to stop it.

This one was clearly an extreme case, but he’s  not unique.  So many in the “herper” community do a lot of talking about conservation and about how much they love snakes, but they don’t  think twice about flipping substrate, and dragging terrified snakes out from under it to play with them. Every snake they see must be grabbed and tormented, or posed in the sun for photos until he’s  exhausted and dehydrated — abuse no one would tolerate if the animal in question were  anything but a snake. Imagine a whole community of people going around grabbing rabbits up by their ears and shaking them and playing with them as if they were toys!  When herpers treat snakes this way in videos intended to educate the public,  it adds insult to injury by modeling disrespectful and abusive behavior to the very people they’re trying to convince that snakes deserve to be respected.

I’m not sure what  the answer is.

There are a lot of “ass-butts,”  as one of my favorite fictional characters would call them.  That lot won’t change until they get cited for harassment.  Since, most wildlife departments simply turn a blind eye to abuse if the victim is a snake,  they’re probably a lost cause.

There are also a lot of well-meaning people who really do love snakes. They don’t mean any harm, but the harm is being done nonetheless. Unfortunately,  it’s hard to engage them on the subject without alienating them. They’re often defensive, but more often, they simply are not willing to put the welfare of the animals above their own desire to play with  them.

Then there are the handful of good ones. They’re primarily (though not entirely) older, college educated biologists and herpetologists who have matured enough to understand that, “I want to!” isn’t reason enough to endanger the life of an animal.  But there aren’t enough of them and when they reach that point, they tend to just quietly drift out of the “herper” community. They move on to research and real conservation work, get busy,  and their voices fall silent, leaving each incoming generation of herpers to learn from the marginally experienced — the ones experienced enough to find and handle the snakes but still immature enough to see the snakes as toys to be played with just because they want to.

It’s ironic really. Snakes today face two serious threats — the people  who  kill them out of hatred , and the people hell-bent on loving them to death.

The only hope  I can see is for those  mature ex-herpers to become more proactive. Instead of just saying, “Yeah I used to be one of them but I’m past that phase now,” I’d like to see more of them speaking up  when they witness abuse, whether in person or on social media. I’d like to see more of them making time to mentor that incoming generation, so that they come into the hobby with a strong sense of ethics and a healthy respect for the wild animals they profess to love. Herpers raised up this way could be a powerful force for conservation, and if ever we needed that force it’s now!