Dear Joan,



You wrote: "Go to the Search page, type in burn as the Keyword, Search in either Current or 2003 Archives and you should find plenty of depressing stories from people who were honest enough to share them. Also, if you care to, you can access the “Old Forum Archives” from the Main Page and search various forums for still more depressing accounts."



I just tried that and found very few accounts of burns. Most were related to hot rocks, and lots were suspicious skin conditions that were only suspected of being burns. From the search, it would be easy to reach the conclusion that burns are pretty rare. I suspect a veterinarian would have a different perspective. I'm not minimizing the danger, but I frankly didn't find much in the way of first person accounts in those archives.



To be totally honest, I didn't read every single one of the search results, but lots of them were clearly not about burned snakes. I did find several indications that the burns typically occur on pythons and boas, especially the larger snakes, while the colubrids are typically much less likely to suffer the same sorts of burns, (probably due to behavioral differences, I suspect).



A lot of folks wrote about using only a dimmer, and no thermostat, so that seems to be the way to go.



I found some distinctions between "belly heat", "radiant heat", "ambient heat", and so forth.



It is very useful to check the Search function, thanks for suggesting it to me. But... not much about first person accounts of burns, sadly.



Michael

[ Show Entire Thread ]