Posted by:
FR
at Wed Dec 3 08:25:49 2014 [ Report Abuse ] [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by FR ]
A couple of things, Why do you say Gaboons are not exposed to temps of 110F in nature, On any sunny day where the air temps are 70F or over, surface temps will exceed 110F. So I am fairly sure they do through out the entire Gaboon range. Also, Try taking one of your Gaboons outside and letting it crawl on a nice day, The first thing they normally do is take a dump. Also, how long they hold fecal material has nothing to do with speed of digestion. I believe in most cases its about conservation of water. I was taking with my son about this and he brought up some interesting points. He keeps hogs and Sand boas and kings. He mentioned efficiency. Hogs pass fecal often and its very wet and not completely digested. In comparison to Boas who hold fecal pellets longer and is much more solid and dry when deposited. The OP made the king and hognose comparison Which is what I responded too. In my experience, hogs are messier, crap more often then kings, and like Mark mentioned, at two or three times the rate. The point is, its odd to talk about rate of metabolism, when using reptiles. As reptiles are ectotherms and use a range of metabolistic rates. . So in laymens terms, hogs utilize hotter temps, and pass fecals way more then kings and most other colubrids. In the field, there is a huge difference, hogs are active at temps well above kings. In my experience, they utilize exceptionally high body temps. On par, with coachwhips. I use coachwhips as I find them at the same time and same places and they are also out and active at temps well above the other snakes in the area. Which include these common species, mohaves, gophersnakes, kingsnakes, longnose, patchnose, gardersnakes. I think it comes down to this, Does temps effect metabolism. If you say yes, we agree, if you say no, we do not agree. The does higher metabolism increase digestion speed? If you say no, then I suggest you do some testing. Best wishes
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