Let's Discuss Dietary Requirements for Ball Pythons

[Skiploder]

Skiploder,
You have offered up some great information and some thought provoking questions. I'd like to make a few comments starting with the information above. While this shows that some males will seek arboreal food more often then females, it doesn't offer a reason as to why. Could it be the larger body size of the female makes it less suitable to climbing? Could it be that the male choosing to feed on higher elevated prey leaves more food readily available to the ground constrained females, and much like warblers stratifying in the jack pines, it doesn't depleat the source? It wouldn't seem that the different genders would have different dietary requirements as far as the chemical composition of the food item, so there must be another reason. What ever the reason, it is interesting.

Don't know. I've thought about body size playing a role...the possibility that they roam more than females in general and ambush less has predisposed them to be more active hunters...

As far as basking temps and such, I think that you are correct in that a lot of information gets passed along as fact but mainly because it has been reurgitated so often it is believed to be true, like an urban legend. However, I think we all can agree that we should at least try to create an environement that would provide some of the same consistancy of temperature as they would encounter in the wild. Anyone living north of the Mason dixon Line would certainly have trouble with that just using the ambients of their house since most of us like it around 70 or lower depending on your age, gender, or economic situation. So we provide a heat source whether UTH or Basking. And with the heat source is the necessity for regulation since most sources left uncontrolled can injure or worse. I agree that the actual range needed is probably far more wide ranging and forgiving then what gets stressed around here, but again it's easier to say a number than a range when someone is asking what to set the thermostat to. Also, if you tell people there is a wide range they may just think that regulating it is unnecessary which could have dire consequences. So we err on the side of caution. Regarding the natural temps, is there good data regarding the internal temps of the burrows during the daytime hours and the ground temperatures during the night? We can't just go by the average air temps since neither the day or night temps are what the animal is actually in contact with. When they are in the burrow during the day, it is precisely to avoid the daytime air temperatures. Also, if they are wholed up in a termite mound and not too deep in, they could be experiencing a drastically different temp then a snake in a burrow three feet below the ground surface. Same thing at night, since the entire bottom surface of the snake is often in contact with the ground, if the sun has heated that surface up drastically during the day and the evening hasn't allowed for too much radiant loss, the snake may be warmer than the air temp. How many snakes die on the road at night utilizing the surface temps of the asphalt?

All in all I believe your arguments valid, but if we are to change things then we need some good solid data. Also, it should be presented in a way that easily digestible to the layperson since they are going to most commonly be the ones asking. How do you suggest we proceed?

I don't know. I really don't. I think we confuse people new to the hobby with all this talk about thermoregulation zones - hot, cold, ambient. Maybe it's easier to provide a gently varying ambient during the day, with a residual hot spot situated at the mouth of the hide with a night drop. the idea is that these animals tend to spend their days in humid microclimates. If we focus on that one simple trait, instead of three distinct zones ALL the time with a constant humidity of X%, we can simplify things.

Heat your room to 83 or 84 degrees, let it vary slightly with the rise and fall of the day and then let it drop to X at night. Utilize a UTH as soon as the cooling process begins for two or three hours and that's it. The microclimate of the den should be humid but not necessarily the whole enclosure.

Maybe it would be worth our time to design the perfect ball python micro climate hide....? Soak the hide and it gently releases humidity for an extended period of time, something along those lines.

In the USU Study on Ball Python behavior, the first person to breed these snakes in captivity at the Houston Zoo noted:

Logan noted that their ball pythons tended to spend more of their time in the
cooler areas of their cage as compared to other pythons and boas at the zoo. Specifically,
Logan states, “I’ve never seen our regius ‘bask’ under the warm spot…as do other
Boids.”

I haven't looked at exact denning temperatures, but I would think that they would be close to the incubation temperatures we advise. The idea is that - with the exception of night drops - the den IS the incubator. Ball pythons are maternal brooders and the tightly coiled ministrations of the female keep the temp as constant as possible when the sun goes down.

[Eric Alan]

I haven't looked at exact denning temperatures, but I would think that they would be close to the incubation temperatures we advise. The idea is that - with the exception of night drops - the den IS the incubator. Ball pythons are maternal brooders and the tightly coiled ministrations of the female keep the temp as constant as possible when the sun goes down.

I found the following piece of information regarding den temperatures. Per Ball Pythons by the Barkers (p 8):

• Greer (1994) measured temperature and humidity in three nest sites that were excavated in his presence. The burrows were in unshaded open ground, and the temperature of the ground surface over the burrows varied from 107 degrees to 111 degrees F (42 degrees to 44 degrees C); ambient relative humidity was 66 percent to 68 percent. The measured air temperatures inside the nesting chambers where females were brooding clutches of eggs varied from 92 degrees to 96 degrees F (33 degrees to 35.5 degrees C), and the ambient relative humidity of the air in the dry earthen chambers ranged from 83 percent to 88 percent.

On the surface, this seems to be contrary to their recommendation that "our snakes want to be cool, but they occasionally they warm up" (p 173). It's likely, IMO, that these elevated den temperatures were found because the search groups were specifically seeking nesting sites, in which they'd expect to find gravid females and/or clutches of eggs, and not necessarily regular use burrows. The Barker's do note later on that "gravid ball pythons will usually pick the warmer as the place to lay their eggs" (p 223) when offering gravid females a choice of a warmer vs a cooler part of the cage.

Their temperature recommendations are "ambient temperatures of 78 to 80 degrees F (26 to 27 degrees C) with a basking spot of 86 degrees F (30 degrees C)" (p 170-171). They then clarify this in regards to providing temperature gradients: "Even though the warm area of the cage may be 88 degrees F (31 degrees C) and the cool area 78 degrees F (26 degrees C), the ball python living in the cage can easily and purposely achieve a core body temperature of, say, 84 degrees F (29 degrees C). This the snake accomplishes behaviorally by selectively placing only part of its body in the warm area, and physiologically by deferentially shunting blood flow through the capillary beds in its skin," (p 171).

This follows my earlier thought process that the snakes knows better than I do its needs at any given time, which is why I provide a warm spot in addition to a consistent ambient temperature.