Patrick Aust

• University of Oxford

Diminishing natural resources and increasing climatic volatility are impacting agri-food systems, prompting the need for sustainable and resilient alternatives. Python farming is well established in Asia but has received little attention from mainstream agricultural scientists. We measured growth rates in two species of large pythons (Malayopython...

Despite broad scientific consensus that sustainable use of wildlife can enhance conservation efforts, ethical concerns have led some community groups to oppose use of wild animals. Voicing those concerns is legitimate, but underlying philosophical bias should not influence science‐based analysis and interpretation. We argue that philosophical biase...

The use of carbon dioxide (CO2) exposure as a means of animal euthanasia has received considerable attention in mammals and birds but remains virtually untested in reptiles. We measured the behavioral responses of four squamate reptile species (Homalopsis buccata, Malayopython reticulatus, Python bivitattus, and Varanus salvator) to exposure to 99....

Globally, there is an extensive trade in snakes for pets, especially in the European and North American markets. This trade includes many African snakes, but few of these are present on CITES appendices, suggesting little regulation of this international trade. In this study, we assess the status of this unregulated trade, by analyzing export lists...

Commercial production systems for wildlife increasingly involve closed-cycle captive breeding, in which effective regulation requires methods for verifying the provenance of stock. We compared the isotopic and elemental compositions of skin from wild and captive-bred pythons raised under different diet regimes in Indonesia and Viet Nam to examine t...

Snake farming in Asia has increased over the past decade, and conservationists have expressed concerns that farms may foster overexploitation of wild populations and create legal conduits for illegally harvested wild individuals. We conducted face-to-face interviews with snake farmers in Viet Nam and China, with the aim of describing the basic mode...