Having done what your doing, I can offer some advice. Question what you read, not believe it or not, question two basic areas.

1. is this information in context for your purposes, is it useful

2. question methods, this area is extremely important. Sometimes the methods used to take data is extremely odd. One example from a famous well known Great herper, Walter Auffenburg. We, several varanid authors, biologists and I, were discussing useful temps and body temps of varanids. I published useable normal basking temps of 135F to 150F, as recommended temps. They countered with Auffenburgs paper on lethal temps in varanids. My temps were tested and true and produced extremely successful results in all areas. Auffenburgs temps were academic. That is, not applied to the context of the discussion. The debate was long and boring, so I asked, why don't you guys research the paper, one did. Then that one, an author of several books, stated what Auffenburg did was wrong. Auffenburg, obtained his data from tying monitors to a post in the sun and measuring the temps at death. Which is completely out of context to how monitors or any reptile uses heat. And WRONG. Yet its was published in peer review. That data is about as useless as data can get(my opinion) and for many reasons, temp tolerance is based on size, and conditions. Maximum temps are based on the ability do cool, not the heat itself. long thin reptiles, can move to cool areas and loss body heat quickly, thick heavy mass animals cannot. Aquatic types, are normally dark and absorb heat quickly and take high temps, then drop in cool water and cool off quickly. Consider, dark(black) is not just absorbing heat, but also releasing heat. Auffenburgs paper stated 108F as lethal to a point of the cells turning to liquid. yet, varanids, had no problem with short term body temps over 108F, in fact, expressed superior results. Any questions

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