this is funny if i would drink coffee, i would have spilled it


no, really, i think they can digest cooked stuff. i think the problem is that they rely on certain vitamins that are stored inside the organs of their food items, and these denaturate and get destroyed if the temperatures get too high.

(im not sure about any of this, but i think other reptiles use beta-carotene in combination with UV light to make vitamin A. without vitamin A, the bones get brittle and break for no reason, and i think the kidneys also take damage. so, some lizards, like bearded dragons, really need that UV light. so if they dont get their UV light, their bones get brittle, they can even lose limbs, and their kidneys go bust. im no expert but ive seen a chameleon that lost a leg and has kidney damage due to lack of UV light at a rescue facility. im recalling what they explained to me. they said the organ damage and the embrittled bones, forcing the amputation of a limb after an untreated fracture, was due to a lack of UV light, caused by the owner it was rescued from.)

now the thing is, rhodents store all these good vitamins in their liver. they can make them, and do so, and store them in different internal organs. just like cows make their own vitamin C, but humans cannot make vitamin C, and when humans cannot get vitamin C they start bleeding from their mouth and nose, the teeth fall out, and they ultimately die in agony. BPs are nocturnal and adapted to it, they rely on their food to deliver the vitamins. its in the internal organs of their food item. and heat just destroys all of it. so they cannot survive on fillet pieces of raw meat, and they cannot survive on cooked rhodents.

as i said, i dont know enough about molecular biology to be sure about the details. but the answer is: BPs rely on vitamins stored in certain internal organs of the food item, and heat will destroy them. and without these vitamins, there would be serious health consequences, ultimately leading to death, just like absence of vitamin C in human nutrition would kill a human.