It is fairly easy to overheat and kill a small snake in a small, insulated shipping box if you go overboard with the heat packs, even in the middle of winter. On the other end of the spectrum, I have received young bloods in from half day shipping events that felt like an ice cube, but after a slow temperature acclimation, came through with no health issues or R.I. Bloods can take temps down into the 50's for a few hours without a problem, but lower than that would probably limit their survival. Oxygen depletion during shipping is not a problem whatsoever, as you cannot suffocate a snake in a sealed box even over several days. We did some experiments on small colubrids in the mid 80's due to this shipping concern, and found that they could survive for 96 hours in small airtight containers at room temperature without any adverse effects. In this case with no heat packs, unless they were in some area of extreme heat, I would agree with Angel in that they were probably frozen to death. Hope you can work something out.



Kelly

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