timisimaginary
Arachnosquire
- Joined
- Apr 22, 2014
- Messages
- 81
we are taking animals who have developed those instincts for living in a particular environment, and moving them into a completely alien and unfamiliar environment. no matter how hard we try, no terrarium can come close to accurately reproducing their natural homes. all those instincts that were perfectly honed for one environment can sometimes become confused and go cross-wired in an artificial environment. a terrestrial T in captivity doesn't climb because it "wants" to climb or because it thinks it's "fun", more than likely it climbs because it's trying to get away from something on the ground, be it moist substrate or a vibration or something else its instincts haven't prepared it for, or because some other behavioral drive that would be perfectly normal or healthy in the wild is being channeled differently. and occasionally there's just an individual who's weird or has it's instinctual wiring crossed. in the wild, though, those individuals usually don't last very long.
instincts can lead animals to do dumb things when confronted with situations that are unfamiliar or new. how many different types of animals, including T's, get themselves killed trying to cross roads every year because their instincts drive them to, despite the presence of giant metal things speeding around and crushing them? nothing in the millions of years of evolution that they've gone through has prepared themselves for that. the best we can do is meet their needs, as best as possible, within the artificial environments we keep them in. luckily for T's, those needs are fairly simple. once those needs are met, you can decorate all you want and try to make your tanks pretty and appealing, as long as you're not introducing a risk to the animal. i like to have nice-looking terrariums too. but i'm under no illusion that it benefits the T at all. the aesthetic touches are purely for my own pleasure.
