BTW I would suspect that poor fertility in fat females is due to two things:

1) Too much fat = too much insulation; a fatter female may have a higher internal temp (this is of course just an educated guess), which could be enough to damage sperm (this would also be why the general advice is that males should not be excessively heavy - too much fat for them could also cause poor sperm viability due to being maintained at the wrong temp).

2) Fat binds reproductive hormones - this known complication in several species that are far better researched than our darling BPs. Progesterone and estradiol (estrogen) are generally not species-specific, and are known to get bound up in fat tissue. That is why fatter females of most species have reproduction problems; with all of the reproductive hormones bound up in fat, very reduced amounts of these hormones are available to the target tissues, often resulting in reduced ovulation or no ovulation... and for that matter, in males, testosterone would get bound up, leaving less available to stimulate production of sperm.

...it should not be due to the fat physically blocking the sperm from entering the oviduct (that would be a "stuffed-sausage" fat snake!!)

...oh, and for all I've mentioned about temperatures and sperm viability, this is extensively studied in many other species - mostly mammals - but snakes need to be kept in a temperature gradient so that they can thermoregulate; they still have an ideal internal temperature, and this very likely does impact sperm viability.



~Rebecca
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1.0.0 Dumeril's Boa '04
1.1.1 Ball Pythons



0.2 American Pit Bull Terriers (40lb darling lap dogs:Brandy&Mara)

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