My son has an Albino King snake which is estimated at 5 yrs old and it is perfectly healthy. The snake gets filtered daylight in relation to the current natural photo periods. It is kept in a 20 gallon glass aquarium with a screen lid and a 75 watt spot UVA/UVB bulb as a heat source. The ambient temp at night is 72-74F and day is 75-80F with a basking spot temp of 86F.
My son has chosen to do his Science Project this year on the effect of basking temperature time periods on the speed of digestion in the kingsnake. He started with the usual 6 hours of light/heat for the first recorded feeding and recorded the defecation after 6 days. On the 7th day the snake was fed again and the light/heat period decreased to 4 hours with defecation after 7 days. On day 14 the snake was fed again and the light/heat period reduced to 2 hours with defecation after 5 days. On day 21, today, the snake was fed again and the light/heat period reduced to 1 hour per day.
I need to know a couple things
1. Is it safe for the snake at this lesser time frame of heat access?
2. It appears there is no effect from the light/heat periods on the digestion time frame so far. Is this possibly due to the fact that kingsnakes will typically bask less than 2 hours per day?
Thanks for any insight anyone can provide from their experience!
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Minimum snake light/heat periods?
Replies (3)
1. Is it safe for the snake at this lesser time frame of heat access?
It probably isn't a problem if the ambient temperature isn't too low. Since your room temps are warm enough to maintain metabolism, it shouldn't be a problem.
Honestly, to observe a significant difference you would probably need the room to be a little cooler.
Reducing the photoperiod significantly can make the snake get ready for hibernation, but since you have light through the window, that probably isn't an issue.
2. It appears there is no effect from the light/heat periods on the digestion time frame so far. Is this possibly due to the fact that kingsnakes will typically bask less than 2 hours per day?
This is probably attributable to the fact that the ambient temperature is allowing normal digestion. Therefore the snake doesn't "need" to bask.
Also, you should remember that reptiles get most of their body heat from their substrate. So when the light is on, it is really heating the substrate which is then providing heat to the snake.
This is why undertank heaters are better than heat lamps for snakes.
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Chris Harrison
San Antonio, Texas
Thanks, I did not realize that 72-76 would be sufficient for digestion. It's a little late but it is a variable we should have considered even though I do not know how we would have adjusted ambient temp to be lower since that is the ambient house temp with AC on. The snake definitely moves under the light to bask so he must need some heat from it. The substrate is ground walnut so I am not sure how much heat it is actually absorbing and providing?
I agree that the snake probably isn't affected enough by those changes to alter his digestion. I've seen my snake sit on the cold end of the cage (70 degrees) for days after eating. I think he only hangs out in the heat for a little while anyway.
Don't think that his experiment is failing. If anything, it could successfully show that heating periods don't significantly affect digestion time. He could expand his plans for future experiments, like keeping one group of snakes cooler than another group of snakes and feeding them all the same.
