Quote Originally Posted by kitedemon View Post
They are quite funny when mine do one in particular seems to think he can balance on the top edge of the thermometer probe. He is 1800 gm and as big around as my wrist... when he fails he look around to see if anyone is laughing at him... again. Ok not quite but if feels that way sometimes.

Interesting debate, I really wish there was more studies being done they are a huge hobby snakes but biologists don't seem very interested. They either want to study the flashy species or the rare ones. There is so much knowledge on the captivity end but very little on the wild end. Maybe I need to find a biologist to team up with and write a grant proposal or two...
As more and more people are getting into less than mainstream species, more and more issues being seen associated with feeding all-rodents diets.

There have been some excellent papers written in the past three years on this subject. Some get into how mice and rats spike lipid profiles, others deal with issues that arise with some species and how they have difficulties digesting and breaking down the skin of the rodents, and thus need "help" in the way of slicing the prey up.

I spoke to a vet at UC Davis about this last year and he got deep into how some avian prey may be higher in crude fat yield compared to a similarly sized rodent, but that the lipid breakdown is 180 degrees different.

If I feed an adult thrasops two consecutive meals - one of mice and the second of anoles (both same mean weight) and given that the basking and ambient temperatures are the same, the anoles will be processed in less than 30 hours. Mice can take up to 4 days, and I can repeat these results consistently. The metabolic effort to digest a meal of the same exact size is drastically different and that can be evidenced by the lethargy the animals go through while digesting rodents.