A new one for ebay

here is something i didnt think i'd see on ebay-especially as there is a vast shortage of these avaliable to hobbyist right now.....sirens for sale! i have written the guy to ask him what the condition of the animals is...he mentions they like to eat cheese, so i am guessing he has had them for a while. and the price is good-i have written him to ask him for many, can anyone tell by the poor quality pics he has which species hes got, he mentions 4 toes on the front feet (no back feet)but these have no striping and look chunkier than the dwarfs, and they have the smaller gills.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3661902642&category=31693

well he is selling them for bait, and like it or probably not (as most of us here will not) amphibs are legit bait. one useful source i have for finding amphibs in the wild is a book on live bait that teaches you how to find and catch the 'spring lizards'.

The UK ebay site doesn't allow the sale of animals.I presume that this also applies to the US site.

Damian

LOL, you use newts and salamanders for bait over in the US, here in Sweden all amphibians are strictly protected...
Then again, the US alone lets out more CO2 than the rest of the world so I really shouldn't be surprised(ie no concern about the environment).

Hi Paris,
Unless this person bought them somewhere else (which I doubt), in Arkansas these would be Siren (intermedia) nettingi, the western dwarf siren. The pictures are too bad to really tell. There is a tendency today to assign these to their own species, hence the parentheses around the word intermedia. They are very easily kept (I've had a few at home for more than 10 years) but are such avid feeders that an occasional tankmate's leg can be wrenched off by a large example. Ummmmm-cheese is not a natural part of their diet <ggg>. The largest one I have is about 14 inches and 1.25 inches in diameter. Sadly, Siren, Pseudobranchus, Necturus, Desmognathus, Gyrinophilus, and Pseudotriton are all referred to as "spring lizards" and sold as fish bait throughout the southeast. If you need any particulars contact me at rdbartlett1@cs.com Cheers/Dick

this is how populations of just about everything get destroyed, live bait being shipped. tigers for example. pikeral is another problem. if sirens do well in ponds they are introduced to outside of their range it could destroy ambystoma breeding ponds.
look what happned with european carp now they have genetically altered carp to breed male-only dominant phenotypes into populations so that all carp are born male and then sire all-male young, but carp live like 100 years, what if one gets back into native population? yikes.
released goldfish are a huge problem evrywhere
even so its obvious the bait claim is a cover for whats really going on, which is open black market animal trade.
i sure wouldnt want to see fishermen using sirens as bait in my local ponds. not that they would probably surive our winters, but still.