Reptile & Amphibian Forums

We performed a temperature experiment with a corn snake in Rob Carmichael's ecology class. Our results showed the snake to remain in the cool section of 76 degrees for the entire 30 minutes. The hot end was 87 degrees. We were wondering if the environment was just too hot, or if this is expected behavior for such a short time frame.

Thank you,
Curious Classmates

30 minutes is not a long enough time to study snake habits. You want to know when the snake last fed, because a snake will usually sit on the heated end of enclosure to digest food. My snakes spend much of their time on the cool side of their enclosure but I never thought of keeping track of the time spent there. Good luck with your experiment.

87 sounds a little high this time of year. I'd go more like 75 cool 85 warm. 87 is not too bad, but 1/2 hr is def not long enough to study a snake. Remeber, it takes them a week to digest a meal. takes us 24 hrs!
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1.0 Pastel/Jungle Leopard gecko from JL (BJ)
1.0 Hypo from Crested (Apricot)
1.0 Albino Hypo? (Cloud)
0.4 Normal/Hi-Yellow Leopard gecko (Beatrice, Goldie, Freckles, Pepper)
0.1 SHCT Leopard Gecko (Brite)
0.1 TBD Leopard Gecko (Rainbow)
0.0.2 Corn Snakes (One snow, One red albino)

I agree - 30 mins is waaaay too little time to be able to tell anything about a Corn Snake. Some I've had for 4 years and I'm still trying to figure them out!

I'm guessing that the key will be whether your Corn was digesting or not - a full stomach would probably have prompted a fairly quick trip to the warm end, although not all Corns will stay put there. Some will go there for a few minutes, then go and cool down, then go back etc.

There are other factors to consider as well which might influence how a Corn behaves. How the tank was laid out, for example. Did you have hides at both the cool and warm end? Were they both the same or were they different? If the snake was being observed, was there movement or noise outside the tank for the 30 minutes? This might have made it wary and want to hide or keep still as a defence mechanism. Where was the water bowl?

It's an interesting idea, but I'd be more inclined to go for a 30 DAY observation period to give a more accurate picture.