Narrow minded or am I asking too much?

[Skiploder]

I don't think anyone was claiming to be a scientist. No one is trying to make anyone hand over their animals for study. They only asked. And the fear that this would give cause to damage the hobby because E. coli is scary then I strongly encourage you to read up on what is lurking on your keyboard right now, your cellphone, door handles, any living thing in your house, the air you are breathing. All of it full of dangerous microbes with the potential to kill. All of it documented. We don't outlaw cats for carrying germs. If we outlawed everything that had the potential to harm us we would all be dead. If you think they would try to outlaw BPs for having E. coli in their mouths then I think they have some bigger problems to tackle first. Like cows, they're just chock full of E. coli, yet I have easy access to their meat. So they would first be working on outlawing these deadly organisms in our grocery stores before focusing down on a select group.

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If it is so widely available and at least 3 studies have been done could you link me to them? It shouldn't be too much of a bother to find them since they are so widely available. It's just that I can only seem to find one.

I've done that link thing in the past and the thing where I scan and e-mail articles and chapters of books in my possession to those that ask. Usually all I ask in exchange is that we have an off-line discussion about the information I've provided as repayment and I don't think I've ever received that courtesy in return so fudge on that idea. I'd much rather have someone jump up and down and claim the information isn't out there and then wait awhile and spring it on them in bits and pieces. Let's just say that there are God knows how many studies regarding the normal bacterium in dozens and dozens of snake species. Slapping it into jstor, google or ncbi isn't going to cut it.

For example, who did the first studies on how enclosure cleaning in captive snakes often triggers defecation? Or how doing a less thorough cleaning job doesn't induce the same behavior? Ain't gonna find that one on the interwebs. But that does not mean it does not exist or is widely know by people who have cut their teeth in this hobby.

Or how to sex rhamphiophis rubropunctatus. Find me that one on the interwebs...........

Google is not the end all be all research compendium. Before people got their knowledge so cheaply off the internet, you used to have access to zoo libraries and old books and actually read instead of cherry picking and regurgitating. One of the cool things about captive breeding some oddball species is that some of your clients open up their databases to you.

You want to figure out the sources, start thinking about who the information is important to and why they would need it. Ask yourself the question - how does a qualified herp vet distinguish between normal bacteria levels in tracheal washes if those reference values were not well known? Somewhere in this reply, I've given you a hint on another name to research. I probably understated the amount of studies out there. The OP is replicating something that has already been replicated and re-replicated. Good luck.