most here follow recipe keeping, they just do what they are TOLD. Its to bad they do not listen to the animals.

I am not trying to be mean, I am just trying to stick up for the snakes. They have lots of behaviors, many ways to accomplish the same thing. For them, its about what works at a time and a condition. Their natural enviornment is constantly changing as the days go by. So they use a series of behaviors to achieve their needs.

In captivity, many keep them in an average way and achieve average results. Doing this, their animals suffer from easy to cure, should have/could have been avoided, problems that a simple choice would have prevented.

If you read these forums, folks are constantly recomending bandaid cures for problems that do not need to occur.

A simple example is feeding, if they have a reluctant feeder, they recomend all manner of tricks. When the real cure is to adjust the conditions for optimum feeding response. That almost never happens here.

As a field herper, natural snakes constantly adject their conditions to fit their current needs.

Another example is, When do I put my snakes in brumation, or when to bring them out. The reality is, if they had a range of temps, they would do all that ON THEIR OWN. Then you could watch and LEARN.

But the paradign here is, TELL THEM WHAT TO DO, repeat it and then say, snakes do not do anything other then what they do under the conditions we force them to live in.

84F in the summer and 55F in the winter is not what they do. Its what we force them to do, Its not their choice.

I do not know of anywhere in nature where these snakes live that is 84F in the summer and 55F in the winter. All areas these snakes exsist in have a range of temps that is hotter and colder.

This recipe keeping is great for beginers and commerical breeders, but don't you think that advanced keepers should not only keep their charges alive, but also explore what these great creatures actually are. Cheers

[ Show Entire Thread ]