I’m against silkies. The mutation prevents them from engaging in natural behaviors safely due to the lack of scales plus all of the extra work to keep them healthy. Obviously some morphs do require slightly different care from the wild variety (less powerful uvb lighting for albinos is what comes to mind), but with these guys it’s just too much. All of the lotion and soaking they need is a big indicator of bad life quality, just because it can live as long as a regular bearded dragon doesn’t mean it’s healthy. Not to mention that reptiles, while not necessarily harmed by constant human contact, they don’t benefit from it but rather tolerate it. Scaleless morphs with any reptile really just seem to be more of an excuse to provide sub-par, unenriching housing conditions for the animal which is already a problem with scaled animals. That’s a whole other can of worms, but I do feel that it fits in with the argument against silkies.
If we could produce specimens with stronger skin then I’d take a more middle stance, but as it stands silkies are unethical in my opinion.
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