So in short, our snakes enjoy making us work lolOriginally Posted by Skiploder
Phrynosoma Cornutum (Texas Horned Lizards) were specifically mentioned,
References were made to other studies involving other species.
Something to keep in mind...
The stress of acclimation - specifically introducing a captive snake to a new environment - has been observed to last an average of 21 days. Again, this stress is quantified by measuring cortisol levels in the animal.
Presumably, that 21 days is how long it takes for the snake to accept spatial and chemical cues and, for lack of a better term. "make peace" with them.
When you clean an enclosure, you may alter both cues that the animal used to acclimate itself to it's "home". You may remove all of the chemical cues by cleaning and if you rearrange or replace the furniture you alter the spatial ones.
You introduce new chemical cues that are transient and which the snake never really adapts to (the scent of the cleaner).
As with any husbandry operation, the key is to make things as stress free as possible. If you use a cleaner like F10, even using it for spot cleaning may not give the animal enough time to register it as a chemical cue that's part of their environment. The experiments showed that if you kept something with a trace of that chemical clue in the enclosure for a period of time, the cleaner would not induce a defecation response.
None of this is new. Many of these studies go back to the 1970s.
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