Hi everyone,
Just thought I'd post some information about the several specimens of Ramphotyphlops which I am currently maintaining. So far, I have had no escapes at all, and all snakes are doing very well, each residing within it's own small chamber. They are eating a pleantiful supply of frozen/ thawed termites, ant eggs and pupae. I will post more on setup later if you like. Just two interesting notes...
One of the specimens that I acquired was extremely large... I mean like bursting at the seems. This was the biggest Brahminy that I had ever seen. Well, it is therefore not too surprising that a few weeks after I got it, it laid a small clutch of eggs. What is interesting is that this snake dug out a small chamber under the moss, and has been coiled around the eggs for quite some time, much like a Burmese python would do. Interesting, considering the fact that these guys are most closely related to the boas and pythons. It appears to be doing this, as many have hypotheized, to regulate the humidity level around the eggs.
Also, another interesting thing... these guys are great swimmers. Fantastic swimmers in fact. A few days ago I quickly took two specimens and put them in a deli cup with some water for a few seconds, just to see what happened. The animals did not sink to the bottom, and they did not struggle violently or thrash around as a terrestrial caecilian would in a similar situation. Rather, at about mid-level, they calmly, slowly, and quietly wound their way through the water, ocassionally going down to the bottom as if they were looking for food, and then surfacing for air once in awhile. They swam just as well, and in the same fashion, as tentacled snakes that I have observed in zoos. I then removed the snakes. This was only a one time experiment, done quickly and out of curiosity, but had some extremely surprising and very entertaining results. I will look into this more in the future.
These are beautiful and fascinating creatures, and I look forward to Saturday when I will be leaving for the West Indies, and hopefully have a chance of observing them in El Yunque rainforest, Puerto Rico, where they are an introduced species. I will try to post pics sometime soon as well.
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DAVE
0.0.1 Oriental fire-bellied toad
0.1 Western hog-nosed snake
0.0.1 Okeetee corn snake
0.1 Dubia day gecko
0.0.1 yellow * Everglades rat snake
1.0 Yunnan beauty snake
1.0 scarlet kingsnake
0.1 albino African clawed frog
0.0.1 Northern black racer
0.0.1 African brown house snake (Zambia locale)
0.0.1 Sonoran gopher snake
1.1 European fire salamanders
(parthenogenic) Brahminy blindsnakes *
