Eek! 111 degrees??

Robin, although I see what you're saying and I understand it as well, I think Matt's point is kind of that if given ample areas to thermoregulate a snake won't bypass millions of years of trial and error and decide to cook itself. I feel as though the instincts and drive to live in an animal that's been surviving for so long and in so many varied conditions would be a little stronger than that. Think that if a ball is in the mouth of a burrow or under a board or whatever, and the outside temp on the ground is easily 160 or so, then i'm sure near the surface it could be around 110, but the python would be able to retreat deeper once it gets too hot. But in the case of a smaller tub set up or fear of hotspots, I think that simplifying it for our captive sakes is best, especially for those just starting out. Different keepers may over the years come up with different ways of keeping that they may feel are more suited to their animals. Most information we provide is simplified for beginners (so they don't make mistakes and kill their animals) or for our convenience.

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Originally Posted by spix14

My apologies then, I took the above quote to mean that you were supporting their use.

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my fault then. I wasn't advocating heat rocks. I was making a point on hotspots in general, hot rocks were just a convenient example. Spot lights too high wattage and too focused in on an area are also a good example. Thats why monitor keepers use a battery of lights roughly the length of a basking monitor so the animal can heat up uniformly and not burn themselves.

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Originally Posted by qiksilver

Robin, although I see what you're saying and I understand it as well, I think Matt's point is kind of that if given ample areas to thermoregulate a snake won't bypass millions of years of trial and error and decide to cook itself. I feel as though the instincts and drive to live in an animal that's been surviving for so long and in so many varied conditions would be a little stronger than that. Think that if a ball is in the mouth of a burrow or under a board or whatever, and the outside temp on the ground is easily 160 or so, then i'm sure near the surface it could be around 110, but the python would be able to retreat deeper once it gets too hot. But in the case of a smaller tub set up or fear of hotspots, I think that simplifying it for our captive sakes is best, especially for those just starting out. Different keepers may over the years come up with different ways of keeping that they may feel are more suited to their animals. Most information we provide is simplified for beginners (so they don't make mistakes and kill their animals) or for our convenience.

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Well said, I guess if you have the years under your belt and you feel comfortable doing it with your animals, then go ahead...me, I'd rather not risk it.

Althouh, years aren't always an indication of expertise... a friend of mine had an uncle that we went to visit that had 20+ years of snake keeping and breeding under his belt, and he knew quite a bit...but he also had an albino monocled cobra that he kept in a glass tank, with a mesh lid, in his living room with no sort of lock on the cage and only a brick on the lid to keep the snake in the cage...and he had a four year old daughter.

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Originally Posted by spix14

Althouh, years aren't always an indication of expertise... a friend of mine had an uncle that we went to visit that had 20+ years of snake keeping and breeding under his belt, and he knew quite a bit...but he also had an albino monocled cobra that he kept in a glass tank, with a mesh lid, in his living room with no sort of lock on the cage and only a brick on the lid to keep the snake in the cage...and he had a four year old daughter.

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your story just goes to show that experience doesn't always exclude stupidity. That's just not at all smart.

Back to the point. I have a Flukers and tested against a Kenmore temp/humidity and an Accurite temp/humidity (20 bucks in Chicagoland) outside of tank. The temps were accurate to within decimals. I found the Accurite to be 4% degree higher than the Flukers in humidity. I have a PE-1 temp gun. Your Flukers may be bad (electronics can be that way) but without a control you wont know. 115 under a light I would think is possible. Hope that helps.

Directly under a light I would say yeah, but a good 18 inches? It's not that strong of a heat bulb.