15% IS the Golden Rule

I found this really cool study published in Physiology & Behavior about feeding patters and satiety in two snake species - Yellow Anacondas and Ball Pythons.

I would love to post it here, but don't know how (or if I'm allowed to).

Basically, the researchers confirm what others have said for BP's - 10-15% is the best size.

Here's the abstract.

Quote:

---

Satiety has been studied extensively in mammals, birds and fish but very little information exists on reptiles.
Here we investigate time-dependent satiation in two species of constricting snakes, ball pythons (Python
regius) and yellow anacondas (Eunectes notaeus). Satiation was shown to depend on both fasting time and prey
size. In the ball pythons fed with mice of a relative prey mass RPM (mass of the prey/mass of the snake×100)
of 15%, we observed a satiety response that developed between 6 and 12 h after feeding, but after 24 h pythons
regained their appetite. With an RPM of 10% the pythons kept eating throughout the experiment. The
anacondas showed a non-significant tendency for satiety to develop between 6 and 12 h after ingesting a prey
of 20% RPM. Unlike pythons, anacondas remained satiated after 24 h. Handling time (from strike until prey
swallowed) increased with RPM. We also found a significant decrease in handling time between the first and
the second prey and a positive correlation between handling time and the mass of the snake.

---

And a line from the Results section.

Quote:

---

On average food acceptance frequency
decreased from 89%±7 to 43%±24, when RPM was increased from
10 to 15.

---

It seems like 15% is the number to aim for.

Yep most of us do in fact know what we are doing lol

Thanks for posting this it is nice to have some conframation.

That reads to me like you should feed picky eaters small meals more frequently, yes? Haven't seen that one here but then again I haven't read many of the fasting snake threads yet as my 2 juveniles are ravenous...

The paper doesn't really say much about food preference or feeding strategy.

My guess would be to feed picky eaters larger meals because if they're difficult to feed, you could feed them less frequently.