Reptile & Amphibian Forums

When getting in WC snakes, you take a feces sample to the vet and he might say they have worms or/and flaggelates and you get a perscripion for some medication.

But what do the snakes do in the wild? dont they catch these parasites? Or do these kill them?

Not that i'm looking for a way to avoid treating my WC animals. I ahve already paid a small fortune for getting feces samples tested *G* I'm just curious

We had a similar discussion on a danish board a while ago, except the issue was mites.

Kind Regards
Jakob

We deworm and treat for protozoa (flagellates are a group of protozoa- single-celled parasites) for the same reason that we do mites.

In the wild, a snake, lizard, turtle, or any other herp will have a certain amount of parasites. Parasites don't particularly live to kill their hosts- if they did they wouldn't have a home! The parasites will do some amount of damage to the wild animal, but usually not enough to kill it.

This is because the parasites are not usually dense enough to cause serious damage. Parasite loads in wild herps differ greatly from those in captive herps. Why? Because of the environment.

A wild herp has acres of land to roam. If parasite eggs pass in their poop, what are the chances of that animal stepping in them or ingesting them again? Sure, the herp might ingest eggs passed by another animal, but all of those animals might be ingesting eggs as well. The chances are still slimmer than in a different situation... Like captivity.

In captivity, we have herps cramped into these tiny enclosures compared to what they would have in the wild. Say a snake poops out some eggs, and it isn't cleaned right away. He might slither through the poop again accidentally, and then right into his water dish. The next time he drinks- Whoops! Reinfested! But instead of all of those eggs going to many different animals... There's only one snake that the eggs are finding their way to, and because he has a smaller environment, he's bound to run into those eggs again.

The above applies to parasites with a direct life cycle- meaning that they don't need an intermediate host to develop into an adult. Parasites with indirect life cycles need to find their way into a different host before they can become an adult in your herp.

This is more common than you might think. Pinworms are thought to be transmitted by crickets. Some roundworms infesting snakes have been traced back to feeder mice.

And of course, if you have other herps, you may accidentally transmit parasites, yourself.

All of this means that your herps should have fecals done at least once a year (twice would be better) to determine if they need antiparasitics. It's difficult to completely eliminate all sources of parasites, so a regular fecal exam is a good idea.

Christina
www.herptiles.net

Thank you very much )

Kind REgards
Jakob

Herptiles suggestion leaves a pretty sterile herp... not bad, but here's my response.

Wild caught animals are happy in the wild, and healthy enough to create a sort of balance with their parasitic load. Numbers are limited to a nusiance as opposed to a health hazard. The wide open space certainly helps with this as well.

Now any wild animal will stress as it adjusts to captivity. Obviously poor husbandry will fester this forever, but the adjustment period alone is enough to allow the parasites to grow out of control. This alone won't kill your animal, but it further burdens a stressed animal (and thus illness prone), and the snowball effect will often leave your new pet dead.

Once an animal has finished deworming, had several consecutive clean fecals, and is edging towards LTC status (>1yr) fecals are less pertinent as once again, you have a happy, healthy herp that will be able to keep any parasites in check. This combined with a clean, isolated environment, where parasite contact is minimal to zero, should suffice.

Ian

But... captivity itself is stressful when you cannot guarantee that an owner will be taking proper care of an animal, and when they are, stressful events can still occur (ex: coming home to find that your power has been out all day and your herps are lethargic and well below their POTZ [a very real threat in temperate climates]). If your herp has a small parasite load that it's immune system would normally keep in check, an stressful event that debilitates the immune system could allow the parasites to flourish and harm the animal.

Of course, if you only have one or a few herps, their environments are clean and you feed (to the best of your knowledge) healthy prey, then regular fecal testing falls a few ranks on the list of importance because, like you said, parasite contact is practically nonexistant. But if you keep many herps, particularly if you receive a reasonable number of WC animals or rescues with unhealthy/uncertain backgrounds, then regular fecal testing becomes more important as there are more risk factors.

What I forgot to specify was that finding parasites in your herp does not mean that they must be treated. IMO, parasites like Entamoeba, coccidians, hookworms, Capillaria, and flukes (which I think would be bizarre to find in a long-term captive that has been previously examined) warrant more serious consideration for treatment than say, oxyurids.

Regarding the speculation that a small parasite load helps digestion in some species (excluding hindgut fermentors like igs), do you know if anyone has done further investigation?

Christina

It all comes back down to husbandry doesn't it

There was a short study on a symbiotic relationship with parasites. I can't recall it by memory, and can't get on VIN this weekend, but it mainly stated that a parasite involved in reptiles does break down certain components of the diet into a more usefull form. Kinda vague, but like I said, I can't remember the specifics. I don't think there is a vital component to this relationship as plenty of herps have done well without it. Surely the benefits are outweighed by the blood sucking nature of the beast.

Ian

Most people associate the term parasite with a definite negative effect on the host animal. This is probably due to the fact that for obvious reasons, the vast majority of people only have experience with parasites in captive animals. As you and Christina both mentioned, captive wild animals can be under stress, and I would go as far to say that all captive animals, no matter how comfortable they appear, are all under some degree of stress. Correspondingly, all captives have some degree of immune system depression. In nature, parasitic symbiosis is extremely complicated and balances on a thin line as far as positive or negative effects on the host species are concerned. It is the result of gradual adaptation, over millions of years, between hosts and parasites during their evolution together. This has formed a wide range of symbiosis between host and parasite from beneficial to pathogenic.

You touched on the beneficial aspects that some types of parasitism have for their hosts. This can be seen when you look at the three main types of parasitism:
Commensalism - one member receives benefit and the other is neither benefited or harmed.
Mutualism - both members benefit (as in ruminants for example).
Parasitism - the parasite for some reason becomes a detriment to the host, usually due to a stress factor.

The vast majority of parasitic relationships in nature are actually either commensal or mutual. In some cases, hosts actually invite certain types of beneficial parasitism. True cases of detrimental parasitism in nature are usually self limiting and it is fairly rare in nature for a parasite to debilitate the host to the point that the host dies. When it does occur, it usually is initiated by some type of stressor, and this is where the captive environment comes in. In captive born reptiles, the exposure to certain organisms found in nature is not available. It is thought that certain beneficial relationships between reptiles and these other organisms may have specific critical benefits, one of which is to keep other, potentially pathogenic organisms in check. The combination of stress and the lack of access to certain beneficial commensal and mutual organisms, is probably one reason why many reptiles in a captive environment, are more prone to debilitating bacterial and parasite infections. The obvious key point here being that we need to keep captive stress as limited as possible and eliminate any potentially negative parasite load to the best of our ability. Sorry for the lengthy post, but this is a pretty interesting and complicated topic.

Kelly

nt

n/t