Posted by:
chris_harper2
at Sat Dec 6 15:02:37 2003 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by chris_harper2 ]
Do you really think this is a Colubridae vs. Boidae question?
I suspect it's more of a Temperate vs. Tropical issue. Perhaps you need to get some Rubber and/or Rosy Boas to test this further 
Seriously, though, the temperate species kept in captivity *MAY* have totally different thermoregulatory mechanisms.
I suspect that throughout much of the cornsnake range there are weather conditions at both the cold and hot extremes that can either kill or comprimise their health. As such, it may be adaptive for cornsnakes to have more refined thermoregulatory mechanisms.
Burmese Pythons (the species that, anecdotally, seems most likely to get burned in captivity), on the other hand, may not need such refined mechanisms since they only have to deal with temperatures at one end of the extreme - heat.
But that still would leave the question why do Burmese Pythons get burned? Perhaps it is most adaptive for them to sense ambient rather than surface temperatures. If a Burmese Python is in the thick brush (where it is unlikely to find hot surfaces) it may only need to sense hot ambient temperatures (i.e. 'the air') to "know" to avoid wandering or foraging. In other words, there might be no reason to evolve mechanisms to sense hot surfaces, especially if such mechanisms come with inherent costs.
This is all speculation on my part, of course. I am a published author in the field of evolutionary biology, though, and this is the type of adaptive strategies that I had to consider as part of my work.
The reptilian thermoregulation literature is not something I'm well read up on. However, I do think that the assumption in herpetoculture that reptiles will thermoregulate as to obtain their ideal temperature is not necessarily correct. Different species from different habitats may have significantly different thermoregulatory behaviors. If so, this would certainly explain why studies of thermoregulation often produce counter-intuitive results.
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Temperate vs. Tropical??? - chris_harper2, Sat Dec 6 15:02:37 2003