Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I just saw some disturbing pics of a snake with thermal burns.Im just curious what temps would cause this to happen?

BTW I finally got my bins perfect.When I put the newspaper in the hotspot is 92 and the airtemps are 77, that sounds pretty good to me for a couple of boas.And like suggested I wont worry so much about it.I have never had to use such small bins.Ive always had big cages with lots of temp gradient so that had me worried.
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Anybody remotely interesting is mad in some way or another.

If you can't leave it their I wouldn't put your snakes on it. lol

It has less to do with the actual temperature than the thermal mass of the object. IE you can go outside on a 120 degree day, but if you jumped in a 120 degree hot tub you would get scalded.

A 120 degree wood shelter is df thatn a 120 slate shelter...etc

like I said, just touch it.

Excellent post and good examples. Putting your hand on something can often be more accurate and useful than shooting it with a temperature gun.

>>It has less to do with the actual temperature than the thermal mass of the object. IE you can go outside on a 120 degree day, but if you jumped in a 120 degree hot tub you would get scalded.
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>>A 120 degree wood shelter is df thatn a 120 slate shelter...etc
>>
>>like I said, just touch it.
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Currently keeping a small collection of various Gonyosoma. Both G. janseni and G. oxycephala.

Touching it will definately give you a good idea of how hot it is and I agree with the other posts. I have found that most burns are a result of a very hot basking spot combined with low ambient temps. This is usually caused by too much ventilation (screen tops for ex.) This forces the reptile to try and heat up by spending too much time on the basking spot. Another common problem in this type of system is dehydration. Basically this design forces the reptile to burn itself in order to heat up. Most reptiles don't want to sit on the basking spot for an extended period unless we force them to.

I'm certainly no expert but I've had friends cause thermal burns on some of their reptiles and too much ventilation is usually the culprit. Don't quote me on this but some people use extremely high temps for basking spots on some lizards. I believe it was over 150F. I've never actually used a temp that high but I do use around 130F on bricks for my bearded dragons. I've been doing this for about 3 years and have never had any burns. I do give them a few choices for temps and despite the bricks being very hot to my touch, they sit on them for around 10min after they eat.