Experience & Research

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Ophiuchus

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There's been some debate on this recently.

What is "experience" and how is it gained?
- is it something only obtained from personally owning/breeding an animal?
- what about caring for that animal in a petstore?
- does reading count?

Here's an example: I, Ophiuchus, have never owned a Uromastyx lizard. However, I have taken care of them at the various LRS I've worked for. I have also read various books, articles, scientific journals on them. In addition, I've heard/read experiences from people I know who DO keep them.

Based on the above, should I be allowed to give advice on Uromastyx?

Also, the word "research" is thrown around lot, and is probably misused. What is 'research"? Can reading books, articles, journals, be considered 'research"?

Let's talk about it...
 
Personally, I think, once you've experienced keeping such an animal healthy and thriving (not just alive..) for years then you can give a basic caresheet..
 
We might as well start a thread on common sense...
 
Well experience is something you can only get when being exposed to a thing/event, so reading obviously isn't experience.
Experience is most closely linked to experimentation.

There are obviously different levels of experience... experience of keeping something alive, and experience of breeding an animal and rearing young is completely different.

Of course caring for something in a pet store would be experience- it's giving you experience by doing it. However, it may be limited, as you won't necessarily have the animal over a complete lifespan.

Research is investigating- whether it be from people, books, articles etc. How effective your research is depends on how you interpret it. Not everything in print is correct, not everything is peer reviewed and not everything should be considered gospel. You want to try and critique claims and papers. With husbandry and keeping reptiles, not much is gospel, with often more than one way of doing things. Also it doesn't help that we know jack all about reptiles in comparison to other animal classes.

Research and experience overlaps by experimentation to discover and falsify or accept current knowledge.
 
You know how much I would LOVE Frank Retes to join this discussion?...
 
Good points...and I agree with all of them. Obviously, I would take the word of someone who has bred Uros for years over that of someone with say, my "experience level."

My point here (no sense beating around the bush) is that someone on another thread is basically implying books are useless and that a person is incapable of knowing anything about said reptile unless they've personally kept/bred them. For obvious reasons, I disgaree with that mentality. I suppose if thats true, then the only reptile I have a clue about is cornsnakes, since thats the only species I've bred and produced offspring with.

Let's take the motorcycle analogy once again: I don't have to personally own a motorcycle to know how it works, or how fast it goes, etc. Indeed, I agree that there's a certain experience gained only through actually hopping on one and riding down the highway with one, but to say that unless I've had one for years, I don't know anything about motorcycles is kind of a stretch, don't you think?
 
Oxymoron? How so? Maybe our common sense was lost. Somewhere along the line mankind just dumbed down...

And the motorcycle analogy... MOTORCYCLES ARENT LIVING ANIMALS. For buying a pet, knowledge and proper application of it is life or death for an animal. For motorcycles, if you crash it, thats YOUR problem, not that of a living, breathing animal who didnt ask to be kept in a glass box its entire life.
 
Never are books or articles etc. useless. However, having experience can trump reading. If I have kept an animal successfully, I know I feel like I know what I am talking about and can give better answers to a question. Dont you?
We seem to have been over bits of this before in another threads (that to beat around the bush is just to continue an argument that could be solved if you simply looked up the definitions of experience and research), that there isn't a lot of captive husbandry research on reptiles in comparison to fieldwork studies and we went over that although you can take information on this that things are different in captive care.

This is where I copy and paste the fourth paragraph on my post on articles, journals and books and how long they tend to last as "correct information" and reasons for that.
 
Not to mention the HUGE amount of books that are outdated, incorrect, and give outright dangerous information to unsuspecting newbies. And now with the online caresheets, its a hundred times worse, where any Petco Joe who saw a sav that happened to still be breathing in a 10 gallon can practically write his own book...
 
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