Questions about this person's set up.

[Rinne]

Sorry if this is an obvious question, I'm not new to keeping reptiles but I am new to keeping snakes, so I'm still learning.

I'm very interested in breeding ball pythons and hope to someday do so, I'm sure it wouldn't be for some years as I have a long way to go, but I had some questions about it nonetheless.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JpwF3bPgcQ


I was watching this person's video and I'd love to have a setup like that one day. But my question is, how is it the snakes don't escape? The first ones shown, on the white shelf. I see some sort of lock/clip on there but I don't actually see how it's secured, I don't see it clipped to anything. It just seems like slide-out "drawers", how can they not escape from that? Secondly none of them have any sort of heat-pad or thermostat. I thought it was very important to be able to control the temperatures, with one side cool and the other side warm. It was stressed to me to get a good thermostat and heatpad for my ball python and so I did, but how is it he can keep so many of them and they're fine? He doesn't have one for each one, obviously. I guess he can just keep the whole house at a set temperature, but I'd imagine it would still fluctuate and even so, they need a choice between two temperatures right? I don't really get how that works. How they aren't escaping, and how they're kept warm/cool enough.

[CptJack]

The tops of the shelves are too close for the snakes to get out - there's not enough gap.

Heat is attached to the shelves themselves, in the back to provide warm spots. Heat tape (what's controlling it) will be on a thermostat, but probably somewhere closer to ground level.

[Rinne]

Ah, I was wondering if they would find a way to slide it, but apparently not. Thanks for your help!

[Eric Alan]

Ah, I was wondering if they would find a way to slide it, but apparently not. Thanks for your help!

I'd never say that anything's impossible, but an unassisted escape from a quality rack system is right up there.

Edit: The clips that you're seeing on there are for identification and record keeping purposes only.