Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Now I always play devils advocate here and make sure to see both sides of every discussion so these arent EXACTLY my beliefs.....I have seen and caught monsterously fat snakes before,that have eaten meals BIGGER than they are! I see this related because noone in the last thread bothered to mention the factors that LET us grow snakes faster in captivity...namely properly balanced diets,and removal of parasitation and predation from the equation.What a snake is "supposed" to look like isnt necessarily optimized in the field is it?How much energy does a snake lose in hunting,less than ideal food items,parasites and anti-predation tactics?? I suggest its fair to say SUBSTANTIAL energy that in captivity it funnelled to growth.
I think its the improper diets (like feeding adults 10 fuzzies at a meal instead of 2 large mice)that build up fat in gray bands and milks in particular. If you see any disproportionate-tailed milks you can almost guarentee that is the culprit. This leads to great initial breedings but burns out females very quickly-among other health problems.
There are also the anomalies like my glades rat from a couple years ago that only had 1 shed cycle per YEAR...she ate 2-3 jumbo rats at a sitting and triple clutched over 100 eggs without a problem.Obviously the energy she saved in sheds and in between feeding problems contributed to fat...and then to egg production.I posted pics that year and everyone told me not to breed her....but I thought it the best way to make her lose weight,I was right!Anyway, some more random thoughts,lol,Jeff

What do you mean by "disproportionate-tailed"?
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Tim

I think that has to do with too much fat in the diet...relatively speaking of course!Jeff

Jeff,

I know I spoke about predation on snakes and how overeating in the field would not be advantages for them and how a steady, healthy diet influenced the size of a captive and wc king. I'm not sure if anyone mentioned parasites, but that kinda goes along with caring for your snake...especially with kings which everyone knows are prone to gutloads and almost always seem to have some minor parasites that don't affect the snakes.

As far as fat snakes...yeah, water snakes and cottonmouths!! I've seen some of the fattest snakes in NA in the wild of some of these Florida swamps - nasty, fat and mean as all get up; but a big king or indigo will make short work of them, especially Florida Kings which seem to have a penchant for live water snakes.

And I bet the vast majority of snakes you see that size are not contrictors; and two, they've probably just eaten. I've seen a monstrously big around 5-6' D'back in central Florida that had just eaten and it was freakin' as big around as my thigh and hot as a steam engine (I had no desire to get within 10 feet of this snake - seriously, it was HOT).

If you want to talk about optimizing size I guess someone's done some work on it...but most snakes I see or catch that are contrictors tend to be leaner snakes. I can't recall ever seeing a obese rat, corn, bull, or kingsnake in the wild; if they are that big they usually upchuck and then you can see their real size. We also can't confuse a large wc snake with what looks like an overfed snake either. Anybody who knows kings well can tell it's an obese king when they see it. It kinda like "Man, what a porker!" Everyone knows it's a little piggie and that's just not good for snakes that have evolved to a lifestyle of active hunting and being on the move a lot.

-John