Your Pet Score: | EMODE Pet Score

Corn snake

(Pantherophis guttatus)

Difficult

What does Difficult mean?

Providing appropriate care for such animals is unrealistic for most people.

Caring for animals in this category requires specialist knowledge and experience, as well as considerable time, effort, space and money to manage the animal. Keepers should be prepared to revolve much of their daily lives around husbandry regimes for the duration of the animal’s lifespan.

In addition to initial purchase and set up costs for appropriate housing and husbandry (which may be far greater than you are given to believe) and finances needed for ongoing husbandry maintenance needs, you must also budget generously for veterinary care (both routine wellness and emergency care in case of illness or injury).

Public health caution

Not suitable for households where there are children under 5 years of age or other vulnerable groups (e.g. immunocompromised: pregnant women; the elderly; those with HIV/AIDS; those receiving anti-rejection therapy).

Find out more.

How was this calculated?

Step 1

Animal category: Reptiles = 18 points

Step 2

Q1: Sensitivity

Is the animal an especially sensitive species or individual?

A1: ‘No’ = 0 points

Q2: Lifespan

Does the animal have a long potential lifespan (10 years or more)?

A2: ‘Yes’ = 5 points

Q3: Diet

Does the animal have specialised feeding habits?

A3: ‘No’ = 0 points

Q4: Habitat

Does the animal require a specialised habitat/microhabitat?

A4: ‘No’ = 0 points

Q5: Threat (physical)

Is the animal poisonous, venomous, capable of growing large enough to inflict appreciable injury at any point in its life or known to have unpredictable/aggressive behavioural traits?

A5: ‘No’ = 0 points

Q6: Threat (health)

Is anyone in the household/extended circle vulnerable or immunocompromised?

A6: ‘Yes’ = 5 points, ‘No’ = 0 points

Total score = 23 points (or 28 points if anyone in the household is vulnerable)

‘Easy’	‘Moderate’	‘Difficult’	‘Extreme’
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10	11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20	21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30	31 32 33 34 35+

Now you know the score, what’s next?

You can now use this information to make a judgement about the level of commitment you are prepared to make. EMODE cannot, however, account for all the factors that may influence your decision as to whether this is the right pet for you. For instance, how much experience do you have in caring for your animal of interest? The following supplementary information may be helpful:

Are you buying responsibly? Read our top tips when acquiring an animal as a pet.
How much research do you need to do, and where will you find reliable guidance?
Are you confident that you can meet the five freedoms?
Are you certain you can afford the costs involved in keeping the animal in terms of time, effort, space and money?
If your animal of interest carries a public health caution, are you willing to expose yourself and your family to these risks? Do you know if anyone in your household has allergies to the animal?

It is now widely accepted that good welfare is not simply the absence of negative experiences, but rather is primarily the presence of positive experiences such as pleasure.

A. Boissy et al.

Reptiles are physically, emotionally, and psychologically sensitive. They possess complex biological needs, and their sensitivity and sentience is clear to anyone who chooses to be mindful of these animals. Few people who hold them captive seem to appreciate those needs, or look beyond the mundane practicalities of how one can obtain and “keep” a reptile, to whether it is right to do so.

Clifford Warwick

…no captive environments can ever hope to fully simulate or mimic those lived in by wild animals, even the smallest and most sedentary species. All we can really do in zoos and aquariums is to work within the parameters of controlled deprivation.

Gordon Burghardt