The "Enchiched Rack" Experiment

[Lizardlicks]

Conversation in many of the reptile communities I follow has started to revolve around adding enrichment to our reptiles' enclosures to improve their captive lives. Industry standard for many reptiles keeps them alive, eating and reproducing, which for reptiles is usually enough, right? After all, ball pythons in particular are known to be finicky, often requiring exacting parameters, only eating, mating or laying when they feel secure and comfortable. But the question is, while their basic needs are being met, and certainly they're safer and more comfortable in captivity than the wild, is living their entire lives in a 35x17 box the best we can be doing for our animals? Can we do better?

Ball Pythons are considered terrestrial snakes. They don't constantly burrow like fossorial snakes, nor do they spend much of their time in high branches like arboreal species. However they will engage in both burrowing and climbing behaviors in the wild. Hungry young ball pythons on the hunt for either food or a mate have been recorded to climb into lower branches. A snake that's just eaten a big meal or going into shed will generally go to ground to be left alone in safety. In decently furnished display cages, captive terrestrial species will utilize their surrounding in much the same way. If they will use their surrounds and engage in these behaviors, shouldn't it follow that they should be provided the opportunity to choose to do so?

For ball pythons, the name of the game is creating visual disruption, allowing them to traverse their entire enclosure while being forced into open space as little times as possible. This is easy to provide in pvc caging and tanks that have both horizontal and vertical space for furnishings, but those keepers whose space or collection size limit them to rack systems are at a disadvantage for providing enrichment objects. I'm included in that last category, and I was rather fussed at not having a lot of options for providing my snakes a more stimulating environment. I WANT my snakes to be able to engage in natural behaviors while still being in the safety of captivity. So I decided to experiment.





The girls got upgrades to their new adult sized digs last Thursday. I picked out the Sterilite 90 qt tubs (1866). They're pretty close to the foot print of the 41 qt standard; at 30X19 inches it actually has about 10 square inches more of floor space. More importantly though, it's more than double the height: 13 inches versus 6. The tubs are a little bare bones at the moment, but in the next few weeks I'll be adding pvc pipes for tunnels, and some Malaysian drift wood pieces for climbs (they're wider than other types of wood for fat beep butts and the twisty bits make lots of additional hiding spaces). Other enrichment items will include leaves gathered from my yard (frozen in ziplock bags for a few weeks first to kill off any unwanted creepiest first, of course) for interesting smells. I can even scent them with their rats the day before feeding to stimulate hunting behaviors.

It’s been almost a week and everyone seems happy with the upgrade so far. The temps and humidity are stable, they both ate fine the day after, and when I checked on them last night, both had a serious case of pink belly, so we’ll see some new paint in a few days. If the current set ups work out with the extra furnishings, I'll be building some custom racks to house the bigger tubs and outfitting all of my enclosures similarly. Fatty liver disease and other obesity linked diseases have been turning up more frequently in necropsies as cause of death for what should other wise have been healthy, young captive snakes, a fate I hope to avoid by giving my pets a more enriched and complex environment that encourages them to move about and explore. I lose some efficiency in space from the increase in vertical height, but that doesn’t really matter much since I don’t ever plan on having some giant monster operation like BHB or something. This is purely for my own enjoyment, and what I lose in space I hope to gain in happier, healthier snakes. I don't think I'll ever be able to revolutionize the industry, but by experimenting and keeping track of my animals' progress in public, maybe other small scale owners and breeders might want to try some experiments of their own?