Posted by:
Katrina
at Sun Mar 14 10:53:17 2010 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by Katrina ]
>>And who says that the snakes in question *won't* hibernate? It's an adaptation, after all, right?
>>
>>Funny how you mistrust anyone who has even the slightest appearance of not fully agreeing with you.
Steph,
I know you know your box turtles, but these are a completely different species with a completely different set of adaptations. Boa constrictors WON'T hibernate - if they did they'd already have migrated from Mexico to much of Texas by now - and there were no boa constrictors in Central Texas when I was a kid. I'll admit I don't know much about the big snakes (or much about snakes), but I do know that Burmese python keepers live in fear of low temperatures, and a few have told me that letting a large Burm sit in lower than ideal temps for any length of time is asking for pneumonia. Yeah, a lot of snakes need a cool down peroid to reproduce, but "cool down" is not the same as hibernation. These snakes just don't hibernate - I wouldn't want to risk my giant Mexican musk with hibernation, so I doubt it could be done with anacondas and boa constrictors. 40F soil temperatures might not kill a snake (assuming it had the instinct to burrow down), but a few days of 40F degrees at the snake's level would likely be enough to induce immune problems - drastically increasing risk from infection. (I know I'm sounding like the USGS authors with that comment, but if they can do it, so can I!) Plus, at 40F, a snake is at greater risk from predation. While the native reptiles have probably long since burrowed out of sight, a 40F Burmese is going to be a Domino's delivery special to a raccoon, opposum, weasel, rat, or shrew - some of those predators hibernate, and some don't.
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RE: hibernation - Katrina, Sun Mar 14 10:53:17 2010