In everyone's circle of friends, there are inevitably a few cold-blooded animal lovers.
Spiders, snakes, horned frogs, lizards, geckos, these frightening "cold-blooded" animals are becoming new and popular pets. Because they are predominantly reptiles, they are also called "climbing pets", and lovers who feed them call themselves "creepers".
"Cute" and "scary" are a pair of antonyms often used on them, the former from climbers and the latter from most people who don't understand the world of climbing pets.
Not close to people, not fond of moving, convenient is the common cognition of these two types of people for climbing pets, for modern people with busy lives, compared to cats and dogs, climbing pets may be more suitable companions.
The pet world ruled by cats, cats, dogs and dogs is being invaded by climbing pets.
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▎ Climb pet new world
There is a saying among climbers: Once you enter the pit, it is difficult to have only one climbing pet. For Meng Xin, who has just entered the pit, the freshness has not faded, and the enthusiasm is at its maximum, especially so.
As early as when Ah Meng was studying in Australia, she had watched the video of the pet climbing blogger on the b station and was full of interest in the leopard print palace. Shougu, also known as gecko, leopard-print shougu belongs to one of the more lively species, no suction cups, but can jump.
cacao
Because he still had no fixed place to live, Ah Meng's idea of raising a leopard print to guard the palace was delayed.
Last year, under the amway of her friends, she found a shop on Taobao that sold climbing pets, and the shop happened to have leopard print shougong for sale.
She systematically went to understand the leopard pattern palace again, and found that it was not noisy, it was relatively hygienic, and the breeding conditions and cost were within acceptable range, so she spent 88 yuan to buy the first leopard pattern palace. It is a female shougong, and Ah Meng named it Cocoa.
▲ Cocoa that is molting
Leopard print shougong can obtain a variety of genes and colors through reproduction, and there will be different variations in patterns, colors, body shapes, etc. In order to "start a family" for Coco, Ah Meng bought a second shougong.
The second gongshougong was close to the color of the grapefruit, the tail was pink, and it was named pudding.
pudding
Before Coco and Pudding were mixed, the family soon had two new members, honey orange, big-eyed cute custard and bright, black-spotted blood glutinous rice on a yellow background.
At this point, Ah Meng's leopard print shougong family was completed. They are kept in their own nests, occasionally coming out to play, picking up screens, or naughtily escaping to the corners of the house to play hide-and-seek with Ah Meng.
Creamy
Patience and carefulness are also indispensable for raising climbing pets. For example, sometimes the molt is stuck in the eye, you have to take a cotton swab to carefully pick it out, and then give the eyelids some nutrient water, but the process is not always smooth.
"With their INTELLIGENCE, it can't understand what you're doing, it's going to keep struggling, and you have to be patient and tug-of-war with it."
▲ Sneezing blood glutinous rice
Although the process of raising a pet is not interactive, it is fun. Cold-blooded animals do not have the concept of obedience and master and servant, but they can identify and feed people by smell, feed them for a long time, and when they are familiar with it, they can touch it and even get started.
"It can sometimes make you feel very decompressing, like when you watch it eat and molt. It will sometimes make some very cute expressions, which will make you feel very healing. ”
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▎ There is a zoo in the room
Xiao Chen, a friend who took Ah Meng into the pit, got his first climbing pet in July last year.
It was a Uji horned frog with a turquoise body and symmetrical amber spots on its back, as if it were breathing with someone, always bulging, staring at its black eyes and not looking at people.
Horned frog "bubble"
This horned frog is the result of a "struggle" between her and her mother. She used to own a cat, but she loved to run around the house and was often nagged by her mother. Later, Xiao Chen carried back a small breeding box, which contained this small horned frog, clean, did not occupy a place, and would not run around.
For Xiao Chen to give up the matter of raising cats, her mother was once pleased. It's just that my mother didn't think at the time that things would never get out of hand.
Not long after, under the temptation of the Taobao shop owner's circle of friends seller Xiu, Xiao Chen bought a maned lion lizard, and she described the feeling of seeing the mane lion lizard for the first time as "one hit and hit".
Then Xiao Chen brought back the leopard pattern shougong, the tree frog, the eyelash horn shougong...
Up to now, Xiao Chen already has three maned lion lizards, five leopard printed palace guards, three horned frogs, three tree frogs and two eyelash corner guards, and the room is like a small zoo.
At the beginning, as a newly appointed zoo director, Xiao Chen had to carefully check each climbing pet in the box every day when he came back from work, worrying about what they ate and whether they would get sick, and grabbed the owner of the pet climbing shop every day to ask for precautions.
Over time, she has become an expert in pet climbing, and she has a clear understanding of every habit of climbing pets.
The maned lion lizard mainly eats Dubia cockroaches and some vegetables and fruits, leopard pattern shougong likes bread worms and cockroaches, eyelash corner shougong eats cockroaches and fruit purees, horned frogs love to eat small fish fry, and tree frogs eat very small Andua cockroaches.
The sense of distance is the tacit understanding between the director and her staff.
Xiao Chen would occasionally take them out and put them on her body, take photos and carefully mark their names one by one, and then send a circle of friends; and more often, she would just look at them quietly through the glass, and she would be particularly happy.
Since raising a climbing pet, Xiao Chen's mobile phone photo album almost no other photos, food, selfies, scenery, all to the "sun baby" just need to give way.
This is a happy moment that belongs to the breeder Xiao Chen.
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▎ "Metamorphosis"
Compared with the newcomers who have just entered the circle, the crawlers who have entered the pit earlier and the way they get along with their own climbing pets are more like a calm period of "each is well".
It had been four years since the majestic green iguana first came to Lao Xu's office.
At that time, it was only a juvenile, and it had to stay in the incubator every winter to spend the cold season.
Now, it is an adult, with a body length of one meter, more than the size of the incubator. Lao Xu no longer let it stay in the box, but after heating the incubator, spread a blanket on the top, and the green iguana would lie on it, sometimes all day.
It is not common to be able to raise green iguanas so large, because the breeding conditions cannot keep up and the breeding knowledge is insufficient, and domestic lizards often do not survive for more than a year.
▲ Xu Wantao keeps green lizards in the studio
Although the larvae are not easy to raise, the green iguana will become extremely viable in adulthood.
The green iguana is vegetarian and makes a living on a large number of fruits and vegetables, and only needs to be fed once a week; it also has good climbing ability and balance ability, and can jump freely on the railing of the balcony.
▲ Perform a whole swallow grape
Raising a green iguana, there is almost no interaction, which also means that there is no need to worry about it, there is no need to spend time and energy with it, it is in the office, and everyone is getting along peacefully.
"Now that everyone is familiar with it, it's the same as the desk and bench in the office, just like the environment itself."
On the only occasion, the green iguana laid more than twenty eggs at once, adding up to more than the size of its body. Lao Xu and his colleagues studied for half a day and learned that the egg is soft in its body, smaller in size, and only hardens after being excreted.
The two dozen eggs were left in the refrigerator in the office for several days, and finally thrown away by Xu Wantao.
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▎ Needed and needed
Mo Fei, who originally liked to climb pets, felt extremely domineering when he saw adult lizards at a friend's house, and soon bought a maned lion lizard from a seller recommended by a friend.
While raising a maned lion lizard, she also has dogs, hamsters and totoro cats, compared to the maned lion lizard, which is the least needed pet to worry about. The feeding box is automatically temperature controlled, the power supply can be connected to the wifi operation of the mobile phone, only need to feed once a day, it can live well. Even if you occasionally forget or go on a trip, in general, the maned lion lizard will not starve to death if it does not eat for a week.
Only when feeding the maned lion lizard, Mo Fei will feel "needed", and most of the time there will not be too much interaction between her and the mane lion.
The chicken and her pet spiders also maintain a shallow "mother-child relationship". She had raised spiders in high school, and in the first two years she returned to the ranks of climbing pets.
She has three spiders, the Brazilian giant Naoma Kim, the Venezuelan red-green orange and the Mexican fire knee, and the most common interaction between her and the spiders is that when they finish eating, they leave a small piece of white excrement on her hand as a gift.
"Can you have any warm stories, do you want to wash your mother's feet with a basin of water?"
When asked about the story between him and the spider, he bluntly said that the spider is not as close as a cat and a dog, and most of the time, the offering of love is a one-sided offering. The chickens are responsible for feeding and cleaning them up, but the spiders do not have feelings for the feeder.
Once, chickens would take spiders out and put them in their clothes, they would drill out of the folds of their clothes, revealing a small butt, and now that the spiders are older, this "parent-child activity" has been forced to cancel because the spiders have grown larger.
Although the spiders are not paid much attention to on a daily basis, the chickens will still habitually observe them and worry about them. The most recent discovery was that the fierce, tooth-loving Venezuelan red-green-orange liked to kick the hairs on his stomach to protect himself, so he kicked himself bald.
▲ Venezuelan red- green-orange with a bald stomach
Even so, spiders are still the most adorable beings in the heart of the chicken. Hearing doubts about whether the spider is cute, the chicken argues.
"It feels cute, and many people think spiders are cute!"
Although many people still can't accept and understand the matter of raising climbing pets, climbing friends don't care about other people's ideas and still enjoy it.
Among the climbing pets in Ah Meng's group was a climbing friend, a Heilongjiang man who studied in Yunnan, because the climbing pet could not bring trains and planes, he took a green-skinned train for five days and five nights, bringing them all the way from the north to the south. It's the holidays, and he's about to embark on the journey again, escorting them all the way home.
The human love for climbing pets is constantly expanding.
text | Mu Yao
photo | Provided by respondents
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