Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i dont see what is wrong with housing an animal in an overly large container, like say for instnace a leopard gecko in a 40 g or a kenyan sand boa in a 50 gallon tank

i read alot that its stress and animals find it hard to get their food

but if you provide LOTS of hides and multiple food locations, wouldnt that in theory combat and solve that problem?

and in the wild animals have almost unlimited space

so can anyone enlighten me?

p.s. this is just a question

who ever told you that a cage could be to big isn't thinking clearly. obviously if you have a leopard gecko and you have a hole room in your house for it, it might be a little excessive, but space is always good and gives any animal the ability to move around and decide where it wants to hide and just get some exercise. also the stress of not being able to find food is probably slight compared to being stuffed in a small enclosure.

ya i guess that can be another scenario:

having a leopard gecko in a whole room dedicated to it

but 1 quick question tho: is there such a thing as having an environment that is TOO big?

^ (lol other than the risk of losing your animal and not ever finding it again )

In the 1950's, my mom and her parents had a green anole. During the day, they would let it run loose in the house. Although it had access to the whole house, it chose to stay on the living room curtains most of the time. In the evening, they would find it and it would voluntarily crawl onto one of their hands and get put back in its enclosure. It lived like this for at least three years without incident and then apparently died of natural causes.

Recently, I suggested to my mom that she might consider getting a green anole since she had liked this one so much. I had to explain to her that it would not normally be considered a good idea to give it the run of the whole four bedroom house!

I have a 3 foot kingsnake in a 55 gallon tank with driftwood,etc and in truth if I gave him more room he would use it and plan to as he is active . I feel snake people as a whole keep their snakes in tiny cruel enclosures.
The snakes arent to active not because they dont want to be but because they are cramped .
Lizard people seem to as a whole provide way more room per animal.
I rarely go in the snake forums anymore as think its disgusting that for many the objective is shove as many snakes as possible into an area with smallest enclosures possible instead of just a few snakes in roomy enclosures.
Some reptiles will only use alittle bit of room as they in nature stay in small territory but as a whole many enjoy room .

In my opinion it is entirely dependent on the reptile in question. Although my yellow anaconda is larger than my mexican black king snake I will probably move the king snake to a larger enclosure before the anaconda. The anaconda uses around 20% of its current enclosure which to be honest looks slightly to small for it but i can't see how she would benefit from a larger one. Her routine over the course of a month consists of this: under hide box,on top of hide box, under hide box, in water bowl, under hide box,on top of hide box. She seems perfectly content with this and appears somewhat uncomfortable when in other areas of the enclosure. My king snake on the other hand moves all about its enclosure constantly,moves the hides around,gets in the water,gets under the water bowl,burrows in the aspen shavings, etc.

Many reptiles do get stressed out in larger enclosures, especially if they do not have plenty of hide areas, stress can cause them to stop eating or for parasites and bacteria to get out of control. Those things can cause death, not getting as much exercise as it would in the wild most likely will not. And most lizards definitely require more room than the average snake, you can't fault snake keepers for tailoring their husbandry to snakes instead of lizards...

I would have never thought an anaconda would be so "lethargic" that is true what you say some snakes are more active than others .

It seems the big constrictors tend to be bit lazy compared to way smaller kings