User:Hrgoodtree/sandbox

Note to peer-reviewers: This article is from the bare-bones article on Pythons; Amanda, Miranda, and I have worked on updating the existing page. We worked directly into Amanda's sandbox and some formatting and citations were lost in the content transfer. Please refer there (User:Aguabreadlizard/sandbox) for any formatting and citations remarks. Thanks!

Peer review from luna:

Hey Hannah! This looks awesome, I only have small grammar edits but overall the writing and the formatting of this article are both wonderful. In the third sentence of the first paragraph you need to clarify who the young children are compared to (is RAS more common in young children who had been in contact with the pythons vs. children who hadn't, or vs. adults who had, or. adults who hadn't). The first sentence of the third paragraph is a little awkward, and could be rephrased to be "The python's invasion into new areas, along with its diet and natural habitat all impact human health..."

Pythons and Human Health (New Section) Hannah[edit]
While pythons are not venomous, they do carry a host of potential health issues for humans. Pythons are disease vectors for multiple illness, including Salmonella, Chlamydia, Leptospirosis, Aeromoniasis, Campylobacteriosis, and Zygomycosis often through excreted waste, open wounds, and contaminated water. A 2013 study found that Reptile-Associated Salmonella (RAS) was more common in young children who had been in contact with invasive pythons, with symptoms including "septicemia, meningitis, and bone and joint infection".

Python bodies and blood are used for African traditional medicine as well, one in-depth study of all animals used by the Yorubas of Nigeria for traditional medicine found that the African Python is used to cure rheumatism, snake poison, appeasing witches, and accident prevention.

Python habitats, diets, and invasion into new areas also impacts human health and prosperity. A University of Florida Institute of Food and Agriculture Sciences found that the Burmese Python, as an invasive species, enters new habitats and eats an increasing number of mammals, leaving limited species for mosquitoes to bite, forcing them to bite disease carrying hispid cotton rats and then infect humans with the Everglades Virus, a dangerous infection that is carried by very few animals .Article Evaluation

Article of choice: Ivory Trade

While everything in the article related back to the introduction section, so much of the article was devoted to purely the history and political action towards African elephant poaching and ivory sales, the lack of equal effort and text in the sections on other animals felt especially short. The article seems relatively neutral, I did not see any clear arguments about the ethics or any opinions presented either as opinions or as facts. There is little discussion of the uses and beliefs associated with ivory, besides briefly explaining its use in funding terror. Perhaps a less biased author would add some text about the cultural and medicinal uses. There are over 100 citations, though the majority of them are focused on the deep dive into the African Ivory trade, with limited citations (often the same source recited) in the introduction and other sections of the wiki page. I tried a few different links, including ISBN numbers and NYT articles, which seemed to align with the content of the wiki article. There is no noted bias in the wiki page, though some of the sources come from NGOs or foundations that have biased opinions. The talk page of this wiki seems to echo my findings, though some contributors to the talk page found the language to be more biased than I initially noticed. The page is part of several wikiprojects, including WikiProjects for Africa, Animals, Crime, and Trade. I noticed that the article did not mention indigenous conservation efforts or land conservation influences on elephant populations.