# Do Reptiles Have Emotions? New Video



## Thrasops

First episode of a new educational series is out, presented by the very sexy Ricky Johnson, animal care technician at Halesowen College.

Starting off hot by answering one of the more common assumptions/ misunderstandings that has hampered our understanding of reptilian cognition for decades, and touching on our own limitations in understanding what exactly is going on with the cognitive potential of other species.

:: DO REPTILES HAVE EMOTIONS? ::


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## ian14

I'll watch this later, sounds intriguing!


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## Malc

Interesting... give it a few more myriad years and our captive bread Royals will be wagging their tails like dogs do when we enter the room they are kept in 

(I'll get my coat on the way out  )


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## Elly66

Now that is my type of video of interest and I'd love to see more.

To over simplify this, I'd ask: 
What are emotions?
Is the ability to learn an emotion?


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## Thrasops

Elly66 said:


> Now that is my type of video of interest and I'd love to see more.
> 
> To over simplify this, I'd ask:
> What are emotions?
> Is the ability to learn an emotion?


That is actually an excellent and thought provoking question.
The dictionary definition for an emotion is 'a conscious mental reaction (such as anger or fear) subjectively experienced as strong feeling usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body.'

As for whether the ability to learn is an emotion - that would require a much longer and more in-depth answer than I am qualified to give. Since learning is the ability to reflect upon situational and contextual cues, resulting in the acquisition of knowledge or skills, I would suggest 'learning' in and of itself is not an emotion but that emotion has a great deal of impact upon learning and how it happens. Therefore emotion is strongly tied to cognition.


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## Malc

The problem is that most reptiles lack the ability to display emotion in ways other animals can. Dogs can physically change their facial appearance to express an emotion to a human. They can drop their ears, raise an eyebrow, and look pitiful when being told off or if they know they did wrong for example. Snakes lack that ability, so how can any scientist know how a snake feels.

To use that definition above, "a conscious mental reaction (such as anger or fear) subjectively experienced as strong feeling usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioural changes in the body."...Normally such reactions are induced by a release of hormones. Now I confess I don't know enough to understand if the emotion releases the hormone, or the hormone creates the emotion.... 

I guess the only way to tell if a snake is happy is to check for endorphin in its blood, but the process to take that blood is probably not going to place that snake in a happy state. Is it therefore just a case of us humans assuming our snakes are happy as they do all the usual biological functions and sit nicely curled up under the heater or in its hide rather than try and get out of the enclosures. How can we tell if that snake is contented or bored, or even depressed.

I would like to see these research papers documented more. Let us see the videos of their findings, and have the results and conclusions published in the main stream rather than just within the scientific community. How else are we going to change peoples (mine included) view points. I have (up until recently) followed the crowd and adopted that old train of thought that these animals behaviour are more instinctual rather than intellectual. The comparison of the brains to that of birds, and we all know how quick parrots can learn makes you realise that snakes have the ability to learn and possibly have emotions, but just lack the ability to show them. It's certainly given me enough food for thought to question my previous views on this subject.


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## MrsTim

Thank you so much for posting this. I'm so glad more and more research is being done into animal/ reptile emotions - and intelligence.

I know quite a few ( otherwise quite intelligent) people who will still vehemently deny this. Yet, after keeping, watching and training various animals over most of my life, my own experience tells me that they do indeed experience emotions, and many are more intelligent than we give them credit for. I found that the more you interact with them, the more complex behaviours they develop, and different ways of communication.

Believe it or not, even common garden snails ( all from the same batch of eggs ) showed various " personalities" ( for example, certain individuals were always fearful and defensive, others just cautious, and others curious and very interactive, to the point of almost having no self preservation instinct  ) - and different behaviours - and they are supposed to have a very basic " brain", certainly much less complex than snakes, or other reptiles.


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## MrsTim

Thrasops said:


> That is actually an excellent and thought provoking question.
> The dictionary definition for an emotion is 'a conscious mental reaction (such as anger or fear) subjectively experienced as strong feeling usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body.'
> 
> As for whether the ability to learn is an emotion - that would require a much longer and more in-depth answer than I am qualified to give. Since learning is the ability to reflect upon situational and contextual cues, resulting in the acquisition of knowledge or skills, I would suggest 'learning' in and of itself is not an emotion but that emotion has a great deal of impact upon learning and how it happens. Therefore emotion is strongly tied to cognition.


This, much more eloquently put then I could.

To me - if "emotion " incudes fear, anger, happiness, jealousy- then yes, animals certainly experience and clearly show these. 
If " emotion" is the complex feeling we experience when, for example, listening to a beautiful piece of music, then no, I guess reptiles do not experience this.

Learning is more tied to intelligence, I'd say.


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## Thrasops

Malc said:


> The problem is that most reptiles lack the ability to display emotion in ways other animals can. Dogs can physically change their facial appearance to express an emotion to a human. They can drop their ears, raise an eyebrow, and look pitiful when being told off or if they know they did wrong for example. Snakes lack that ability, so how can any scientist know how a snake feels.
> 
> To use that definition above, "a conscious mental reaction (such as anger or fear) subjectively experienced as strong feeling usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioural changes in the body."...Normally such reactions are induced by a release of hormones. Now I confess I don't know enough to understand if the emotion releases the hormone, or the hormone creates the emotion....
> 
> I guess the only way to tell if a snake is happy is to check for endorphin in its blood, but the process to take that blood is probably not going to place that snake in a happy state. Is it therefore just a case of us humans assuming our snakes are happy as they do all the usual biological functions and sit nicely curled up under the heater or in its hide rather than try and get out of the enclosures. How can we tell if that snake is contented or bored, or even depressed.
> 
> I would like to see these research papers documented more. Let us see the videos of their findings, and have the results and conclusions published in the main stream rather than just within the scientific community. How else are we going to change peoples (mine included) view points. I have (up until recently) followed the crowd and adopted that old train of thought that these animals behaviour are more instinctual rather than intellectual. The comparison of the brains to that of birds, and we all know how quick parrots can learn makes you realise that snakes have the ability to learn and possibly have emotions, but just lack the ability to show them. It's certainly given me enough food for thought to question my previous views on this subject.


Some of these questions were answered in the video. The citations are provided in the description of the video, it should take you to a list of the scientific studies referenced. I would strongly suggest the works of Gordon Burghardt and Michel Cabanac as a starting point but there are decades of research to look into.

The list of citations is here:









Do reptile have emotions? Sources list


Do reptiles have emotions? Herp HQ/Ricky Johnson sources list Francis Cosquieri, from posts and comments on 'Advancing Herpetological Husbandry' facebook group. Jennifer Barnes brilliant chatting and source recommendations. Burghardt, Gordon M. "Environmental enrichment and cognitive complexit...




docs.google.com





The fact that it is harder to determine what a snake (for example) is thinking is the point of the video. For too long this has resulted in the misconception that since we cannot tell what they think - or as you pointed out, compare a snake to a dog wagging its tail or using mammalian expressions (which are usually learned from the owner), they must not have emotion at all. It's easy to compare any group of animals to dogs but in reality this is a mistake and even a strong form of bias as there are very few animals indeed that measure up to dogs in both their ability to express emotion and inform us (humans) of it - given we have formed a close association with them for over ten thousand years and they have had such a strong influence on our cultural development. The fact dogs happen to be very good at letting us know what they want and form such close personal bonds with us does not in any way mean that other animals which are not in that unique position are not emotional.

There are ways to tell if a snake is bored or stressed or contented - measuring serum corticosteroids in blood is one; leucocyte counts is another; glucocorticoid levels in faeces; but beyond this, behavioural cues are also a factor. This is a whole scientific discipline, ethology, and it requires us to have a solid understanding of how any given animal acts and behaves in the wild as a baseline for us to be able to compare captive behaviours. With snakes, which tend to be secretive and hard to observe animals, this is a problem! But there are lots of studies comparing differences in behaviour in reptiles when exposed to different environments. Some I have shared before. A good example is anything involving choice-based testing or preference testing, which Ricky mentioned in the video - there have been some very detailed experiments on certain reptiles choosing to enter inhospitable areas (e.g. cold areas) to get preferred food items but not do so for more nutritious food items. This implies emotion in the form of pleasure, the willingness to risk an uncomfortable area to get something they desire, but not something that is more nutritionally beneficial but less pleasant.

The effect of the environment on this is well documented too (again it ties into that oft-derided word, enrichment) with studies on both Corn snakes and Royal pythons showing snakes kept in an unfurnished, minimalist enclosures tend to do nothing and spent up to 98% of their time hidden and still, and those kept in an enclosure hwere they can express other behaviours - climbing, exploring etc - spent about 40% of their time doing just that.

Play behaviour is another example of something that implies emotion - play has been documented for every order of reptile - lizards, chelonians and crocodilians - except snakes. Does this mean that snakes do not play, or simply (and more likely) that we are not able to recognise when a snake is performing play behaviours as we cannot identify or empathise with an animal so morphologically different from ourselves that uses chemical cues outside our realm of experience. Recently I have seen several people suggest repetitive or seemingly pointless behaviours performed by snakes might be a form of play. We know snakes certainly can distinguish between individuals, they can learn from following gaze (this is documented in Hognose snakes and assumed in some other species).

It is even thought that reptiles experience REM sleep, slow-wave sleep and even dream, which previously was thought to be unique to mammals and birds. This was discovered by placing probes in their brains to measure electrophysiological activity.

It really is a rabbithole!


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## spigotbush

interesting video. its incredibly difficult to quantify emotions though, and a minefield to interpret. for example, to one view it could look like an animal exhibits a basic survival response to a predator, to another it looks like the animal exhibits fear. it seems a small distinction but the implication is rather large. then of course there is language. we are creatures that have abstract thought and a highly developed sense of empathy. we experience emotions very deeply all the time. i seriously doubt that reptiles come anywhere near the same kind of emotions that we do. if we refer to something as happy then its hard to think of that as less than our experience. maybe the reptile experience of happy is simply shallower, just slightly more than content. maybe its more akin to the light spectrum, and in the same way our vision cuts off before UV range the reptile emotion cuts off before it can get to what we think of as happy and gets maxed out at pleased. 
i wouldnt say learning is an emotion, but an emotional response does certainly speed up the learning process. you can reason that a frying pan is hot and would therefore cause pain if it was exposed to something sensitive like skin. you could then experiment and prove the theory in a clinical manner. if you burn your hand and experience the pain and subsequent fear of burning then no more lessons necessary.
there could be a stronger argument for instinct being emotional. when we talk about instincts they seem (to me at least) to be more emotionally driven than mechanical. why would an animal, born and raised in captivity, feel a need to engage in behaviours that protect them from predators? they have never been exposed to the threat or seen anything else being killed by a predator. so does that mean they have innate fear, or an innate compulsion to simply engage in this behaviour? even if you remove fear from the equation, the fact that engaging in such behaviours reduces stress, does that not mean that the snake is more content than if it was unable to do so?
we are (often) instinctively wary of things like snakes and spiders, and for good reason. but we can override the fear of them by education and familiarity. is it any different to young reptiles being defensive and flighty and calming down as they grow and learn that we are not the predators we seemed at first?

not claiming to have any kind of knowledge on this by the way, but i find it interesting to think about.


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## arwen_7

Nice, thought provoking video. I confess that I cannot scientifically back up my thought on it, but I think all animals have emotions, we simply may not always perceive or understand them. - Which I supose is the main message of that video.

I've been around various animals my whole life, and maybe its a strangly acute skill I've picked up but I can read the body language of all animals I've cared for or spent time around without much effort on my part. Which in turn translates to emotions a lot of the time. From a pet rat who seeked out the same soft toy for comfort if a noise scared him, a parrot who swings between a grumpy old lady or an excited toddler with her emotions and indeed our corn snake Katy. Who over his surgery recovery has shown emotions that I'll admit I did not think would be so visable in a snake. 
From being depressed - constant hiding and having no interest in anything going on, rarly lifting his head off the ground and only vague tonuge flicks. Granted a lot of this could have been biological/medical reasons rahter than pure emotions.
Happiness after the surgery (vet nurses commented on the change too) - where he was back to lifting his head up to look around, nosing at the glass twhen people came into the room, "booping" peoples hands in an interested fashion as well as exploring his surrounds and rearranging hides to spots he wanted to sit in. Few of these behaviours I think would be due to biology/medical as he still refused feeding, he appeard to simply be interested and content in things again.
He appeared down right excited when we put balled up paper in his recovery vivarium after months of having only flat paper and plastic hides. He does this thing where he will look at us after rummaging around in the scrunched up paper for a bit, cocks his head to the slide slightly and give a few quick tounge flicks before going and rummaging around again. Exactly like a dog/cat/parrot does when playing with a toy. When he does this he doesn't seem hungry or even looking for a space to hide, he seem to simply be enjoying having something else to interact with after so long without "real" substrate. 
He's still got a few stiches in - which he'll be getting out before we put him back in a "properly" furnished vivarum with substrate and things again. So I'm going to set up a camera so we can watch his reaction to it. I suspect he's going to enjoy making tunnels for days


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## loxocemus

i find it odd you have no problem convincing yourselves that snakes are more than a blank look, much more in fact, yet you don't circle back to the obvious, so what does it mean for us keeping them in a wooden box for their entire lifespan.

oh yes their capable of this, they can feel that, but let me just hoard some, are any of these findings that interests you, excites you all, ever considered when getting a new animal.....

will the more you find out about those eyes staring back at you from behind the glass change your very view of keeping....


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## StuG

loxocemus said:


> i find it odd you have no problem convincing yourselves that snakes are more than a blank look, much more in fact, yet you don't circle back to the obvious, so what does it mean for us keeping them in a wooden box for their entire lifespan.
> 
> oh yes their capable of this, they can feel that, but let me just hoard some, are any of these findings that interests you, excites you all, ever considered when getting a new animal.....
> 
> will the more you find out about those eyes staring back at you from behind the glass change your very view of keeping....


Hahaha I thought you had Thrasops on ignore, didn’t last long did it?

I think you’ll find the whole point of the video and the post, is to raise awareness of the capabilities of the animals being kept in an effort to raise the standards they are kept in. It’s not a huge leap to join the dots I thought you’d have got that one Ed.


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## loxocemus

the joys of reading through the forum not signed in (i actually thought ian started the thread but that's not as funny sorry Stuart), u read all sorts of hypocrisy, like owning 170 animals and professing captivity should be natures jungle gym from the mountain top.

but then some are capable of keeping lots and keeping them well, you just have to massage "well"

just for you stew il make sure i keep "the logged in" bit constantly ticked, if for no other reason than to avoid users who type "Hahaha" and expect to be taken seriously thereafter.







StuG said:


> Hahaha I thought you had Thrasops on ignore, didn’t last long did it?
> 
> I think you’ll find the whole point of the video and the post, is to raise awareness of the capabilities of the animals being kept in an effort to raise the standards they are kept in. It’s not a huge leap to join the dots I thought you’d have got that one Ed.


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## Malc

loxocemus said:


> i find it odd you have no problem convincing yourselves that snakes are more than a blank look, much more in fact, yet you don't circle back to the obvious, so *what does it mean for us keeping them in a wooden box for their entire lifespan.*
> 
> will the more you find out about those eyes staring back at you from behind the glass change your very view of keeping....


Or more to the point, racked and stacked like battery hens. 



StuG said:


> I think you’ll find the whole point of the video and the post, is to raise awareness of the capabilities of the animals being kept in an effort to raise the standards they are kept in. It’s not a huge leap to join the dots I thought you’d have got that one Ed.


Oh you can guarantee all these videos that keep popping are are linked to the campaign to keep highlighting causes for the possible introduction of regulated standards for keeping reptiles by governments or other regulatory bodies. Granted they can also be educational, and if they change one persons opinion on how they keep their snakes then we can take that as being a positive achievement.

Regardless how they are kept, they are still captive. So even if we now say these animals have a level of intelligence and experience emotions, how would we, as hobbyist keepers (or even whoever is employed to make any government guidelines for that matter) determine if the enclosure we've used is large enough to allow the snake to be contented or dare I say "happy". Due to the lack of any ability to display said emotions we would have no idea if by adding a new hide, or branches, the snake is pleased and more happier. We will always apply human traits to their behaviour. We might well believe the snake is happy because it goes and sits in its new hide, or climbs the branch, but in reality it's either that the snake is just curious or it now fulfils a basic requirement that the keeper had overlooked. 

I guess at the end of the day it's down to the individual and if they are comfortable with the size and standard of accommodation they provide for their snakes. Interestingly Rob Barraclough has been running an experiment on his youtube channel, by placing a young royal in a heavily planted terrarium... whilst the snake fed, pooed, even shed without issue, he never saw the snake. He also commented that compared to the simplistic tubs, cleaning and maintaining such a well planted enclosure was much more difficult, which can result in a less healthy environment.






So which would be deemed better. A nice fully furnished enclosure with natural substrates, live plants and branches, but so full that poo, shed and urates are missed and thus the snake is being kept in poor sanitary conditions, or one which has a basic requirements but one that can be kept clean and sanitised?


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## Thrasops

StuG said:


> Hahaha I thought you had Thrasops on ignore, didn’t last long did it?
> 
> I think you’ll find the whole point of the video and the post, is to raise awareness of the capabilities of the animals being kept in an effort to raise the standards they are kept in. It’s not a huge leap to join the dots I thought you’d have got that one Ed.




I seem to be missing half a conversation going on here, as I have Ed on ignore. I don't see his comments and threads although I am sure he is absolutely _thrilled _by all this 'woke' new information (which ironically is not new _at all_, science has known the triune brain theory is incorrect for about fifty years). I shall try not to sink beneath my anguish at being deprived of his wisdom, but instead battle on.

But yes, this, it is only by education and understanding that welfare standards can be improved and we as pet keepers can provide better for our animals. I have no doubt that within the next few decades we will learn more, and have access to better technologies that will also give us the chance to improve our keeping.



Malc said:


> Or more to the point, racked and stacked like battery hens.
> 
> 
> 
> Oh you can guarantee all these videos that keep popping are are linked to the campaign to keep highlighting causes for the possible introduction of regulated standards for keeping reptiles by governments or other regulatory bodies. Granted they can also be educational, and if they change one persons opinion on how they keep their snakes then we can take that as being a positive achievement.


Well there certainly is that. There's also the fact that, beyond wanting to show the hobby in a good light and educate keepers on reptile biology, we actually _do _believe an animal should be offered good welfare simply because it is best for them. There is not always an ulterior motive beyond 'this is better for our pets' or even 'this is interesting!' So hopefully some people come away with a better understanding of what reptiles are capable of and why outdated ideas are incorrect. 

It has long been my stance though that the best way of showing reptile keeping in a good light is to set a good example, to show that the hobby can take on board criticisms and regulate itself, to show it can factor in new and emerging knowledge regarding the welfare and cognitive abilities of our pets and integrate it into our husbandry. Here is an article I was shown the other day that links to my Facebook group _Advancing Herpetological Husbandry_ and other media, and references them in a good light. It does not always have to be doom and gloom but we need to show people good practices to bring them along with us and set that example:









Lizards, snakes and turtles: Dispelling the myths about reptiles as pets


Reptiles get a bad rap, but this is because they’re misunderstood. Promoting healthy reptile pet ownership can contribute to conservation and education efforts.




theconversation.com







Malc said:


> Regardless how they are kept, they are still captive. So even if we now say these animals have a level of intelligence and experience emotions, how would we, as hobbyist keepers (or even whoever is employed to make any government guidelines for that matter) determine if the enclosure we've used is large enough to allow the snake to be contented or dare I say "happy". Due to the lack of any ability to display said emotions we would have no idea if by adding a new hide, or branches, the snake is pleased and more happier. We will always apply human traits to their behaviour. We might well believe the snake is happy because it goes and sits in its new hide, or climbs the branch, *but in reality it's either that the snake is just curious or it now fulfills a basic requirement that the keeper had overlooked.*



Either way the animal benefits, which is the point at the end of the day, isn't it?
Curiosity is linked to emotion and cognition - and it is now widely known snakes are actually _incredibly _curious creatures, it is a defining trait of their behaviour that shapes a lot of what they do. Snakes are well known to examine new objects, to map new areas, explore new chemical cues and this has been tested across a wide variety of taxa - from Hognoses and rat snakes to pythons.
Fulfilling a basic requirement the keeper had overlooked also implies a strong benefit. So no loss either way!

The fact we identify emotion is present is not the same thing as quantifying that emotion. It is enough to know that they are not devoid of emotions as commonly supposed. So what? neither are rats and mice, in fact rats and mice are intensely empathetic and emotional animals that are even known to grieve the loss of conspecifics and form close bonds. So do parrots and other birds. The fact these animals have emotions is not a reason not to keep them, rather it is something to acknowledge and influence their husbandry and steer us away from keeping them in the equivalent of sensory deprivation chambers.

One of my favourite sayings is 'we should not need to justify keeping pets; sometimes though we need to justify _how _we keep them.'




Malc said:


> I guess at the end of the day it's down to the individual and if they are comfortable with the size and standard of accommodation they provide for their snakes. Interestingly Rob Barraclough has been running an experiment on his youtube channel, by placing a young royal in a heavily planted terrarium... whilst the snake fed, pooed, even shed without issue, he never saw the snake. He also commented that compared to the simplistic tubs, cleaning and maintaining such a well planted enclosure was much more difficult, which can result in a less healthy environment.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So which would be deemed better. A nice fully furnished enclosure with natural substrates, live plants and branches, but so full that poo, shed and urates are missed and thus the snake is being kept in poor sanitary conditions, or one which has a basic requirements but one that can be kept clean and sanitised?


That video is... unscientific on a number of levels, which I will get into in a moment.

First though, this is a false dichotomy. The choices are not 'a nice enriched viv that is unsanitary' and 'a basic viv that is clean.' The best would be 'a nice enriched viv that is sanitary.'

Firstly, you can very easily have all kinds of enrichment in a comparatively basic enclosure that will not affect hygiene. Overhead heat, UV, climbing branches, a larger water bowl, more space, varying prey items, wider choice of hides - those are all forms of enrichment that you can use and STILL easily maintain a 'sanitary' enclosure that takes little effort to clean.

What seems to be causing these accusations of 'unsanitary' are the substrate. Which is a deflection. Because even if you decided on a newspaper substrate and relatively simple layout you could still incorporate all the things mentioned above. Just look at Lori Torrini's enclosures, many of which are based around large tubs, all of which feature various forms of enrichment.

So that is the first point.

Leading off from that is my second point. It is often stated that a minimalist enclosure is _easier _to clean - and that may be technically correct; I've always stated the reasons for keeping in a tub (and there are reasons) are all _keeper_-centric rather than animal-centric, and ease of cleaning can certainly be one of those reasons. My proposition though is that if it is too much work cleaning out large vivs - and some of my enclosures have over 100 litres of substrate, so believe me I _know _how back breaking cleaning just one is, let alone a dozen in an afternoon - keep fewer animals rather than sacrifice their welfare.

Then again, substrate does not have to be bioactive, or even a soil/ sand mix. Aubiose, aspen, lignocel, megazorb are all just fine substrates too, it really is not THAT difficult to scoop everything out to clean a viv. Certainly not those tiny little exo terras in that video! Enriched vivs still need to be cleaned out.

The problem though is that there is more to the idea of hygiene than just 'the viv is easier to clean out.' I used to use tubs, and I used to keep even more animals than I do now. And to be honest I found tub keeping highly unsanitary and far smellier. The reason being - a snake that poops in a nice big viv full of an absorbent substrate like soil, or even aubiose or aspen, has the mess clump in one place and it is free to move away. Thanks to the fact you can look in, it is also easier to see when a snake has shed or defaecated. The keeper is then free to spot clean that whole area with a scoop. In fact, toilet behaviour (always using the same place to defaecate) is a regularly documented occurrence for a lot of species, I notice it myself. That is the benefit of space.

In a tub, particularly one lined with newspaper or similar, the paper can get saturated, the smell is localised due to less air flow, and this is why tubs can stink after an animal defaecates. The animal may also not be able to get off it, so what can happen is you get an animal forced to sit on its own faeces/ urine for hours or even days until the keeper cleans out the tub. Just how often are tubs cleaned out, anyway? Is it daily? Weekly? As poops are done (which you would be unlikely to see in a plastic tub)? In a viv they can be spot cleaned as you see them (I generally go through mine when I wake up and again when I get home from work, but I will remove mess as I see it - that's the benefit of glass sides). In a larger enclosure you do not even need to replace all the substrate every time; you can use a scoop to dig out a clump of substrate and the rest is still clean. So you can space out full cleanouts more.

Minimalist enclosures are set up the way they are for ease of maintenance. This is fine. That means they are easier for a keeper to manage, not that they are better for the animal to live in.


Back to the video. So that guy is keeping his pythons at one ambient temperature indoors. He provides no overhead basking facilities, no thermal gradient. The big flaw in his whole premise is - he states it would be 'unnatural' for the snake to be warmed by a heat mat and be forced to move around to thermoregulate, but seems completely and unironically unaware of how unnatural it is to be keeping the snake in a dark enclosure with no light, no daily cycle, no basking spots, no thermal gradient. Just one ambient temperature.

We know Royal pythons climb and sun-bask, it is documented both in the wild by various researchers and natural history guides.(for example the 1961 book on African Reptiles by G. S. Cansdale states that the royal python “in the wild is often encountered sunning in bright light.” Heck, there's a video on Youtube of Stefan Broghammer finding a big adult cryptic basking in a pile of vegetation.

This is important because a lot of people will read that in 'the tropics' ambient temperatures are stable (which is true) but this does not mean that if you are out in the sun you won't heat up more... the sun works in exactly the same way, if you sit under it your temperature (or that of a rock) will increase, often to WAY above ambients. That is why Dumeril's boas for example need relatively low ambient temperatures in the 20s but surface temperatures above 40C. It follows then, that if you are keeping an animal indoors at one ambient temperature, even in a tropical country, there is nothing natural about that. Pythons are particularly sensitive to type of heat and wavelength as we have discussed before.

We _also _know that if provided with an approximation of sunlight (overhead heat and light, near infrared heat, UV, localised higher surface temperatures) Royal pythons make use of it. In one recent experiment they did so for on average 144 minutes a day and were observed to make plenty of use of climbing facilities ( Hollandt, Tina, Markus Baur, and Anna-Caroline Wöhr. "Animal-appropriate housing of ball pythons (Python regius)—Behavior-based evaluation of two types of housing systems." _Plos one_ 16.5 (2021): e0247082.)

Sure, a Royal python might spend a lot or even most of its time down a burrow with very stable ambient temperatures (over 30C in some cases) but they also come out and bask. Best welfare - derived from ethology, or observing their wild behaviours and interpreting which captive behaviours are healthy and which are not - dictates we incorporate this into their husbandry as well rather than deny it to them.

So there is a danger in watching videos like that with an assumption drawn from flawed methodology. Remember all the different forms of equipment Roman Muryn used in his experiment I posted last year, and the pages and pages of discussion that prompted examining the methodology.


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## Malc

Francis, that's a really detailed and interesting post. The point I was trying to cover buy linking to that video was more as an example of how heavy an enriched enclosure could be and the fact Robert was suggesting that it's not really needed as the snake in it is no less / more active than one kept on paper in a tub. There could be 101 reason for the lack of activity, most of them you have covered in your post. 

Interestingly you mention the photo period, and you will know that I have been banging on about providing Royals with a well lit enclosure for 8-10 hrs a day so the snake has a true photo period, which stimulates / triggers their natural behaviour as typically within an hour of the lights going out the activity in the snakes increases, often lasting several hours as they use up the energy "stored" by spending the daytime period under the heater. I fully agree that Robs approach is totally wrong. His thinking that because his local environmental conditions in the tropics are the same as that in the natural range of royals, and no local hot spot or thermal gradient is needed is in my opinion wrong. Often he's stated that the snakes don't need supplemental heating for all the old reasons that the snakes feed, shit, shed and breeds, so in his eyes there is no need to change it. The thing is by not offering a hot spot above ambient you are removing the snakes right of choice. Even on a hot UK summers day, whilst the air temp may well be 30c, exposed surfaces such as paths etc can be up to double that, and equally any shaded area that remains shaded for most of the day will be a good deal lower than ambient in air and surface temps, so offering a wide thermal gradient.

At least these studies, videos and the discussion here make people, especially those new to the hobby, aware of current thinking, and have a better understanding of the the needs of the animal than what most of us had to base our husbandry on some 30 years ago !


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## Thrasops

Malc said:


> Francis, that's a really detailed and interesting post. The point I was trying to cover buy linking to that video was more as an example of how heavy an enriched enclosure could be and the fact Robert was suggesting that it's not really needed as the snake in it is no less / more active than one kept on paper in a tub. There could be 101 reason for the lack of activity, most of them you have covered in your post.
> 
> Interestingly you mention the photo period, and you will know that I have been banging on about providing Royals with a well lit enclosure for 8-10 hrs a day so the snake has a true photo period, which stimulates / triggers their natural behaviour as typically within an hour of the lights going out the activity in the snakes increases, often lasting several hours as they use up the energy "stored" by spending the daytime period under the heater. I fully agree that Robs approach is totally wrong. His thinking that because his local environmental conditions in the tropics are the same as that in the natural range of royals, and no local hot spot or thermal gradient is needed is in my opinion wrong. Often he's stated that the snakes don't need supplemental heating for all the old reasons that the snakes feed, shit, shed and breeds, so in his eyes there is no need to change it. The thing is by not offering a hot spot above ambient you are removing the snakes right of choice. Even on a hot UK summers day, whilst the air temp may well be 30c, exposed surfaces such as paths etc can be up to double that, and equally any shaded area that remains shaded for most of the day will be a good deal lower than ambient in air and surface temps, so offering a wide thermal gradient.
> 
> At least these studies, videos and the discussion here make people, especially those new to the hobby, aware of current thinking, and have a better understanding of the the needs of the animal than what most of us had to base our husbandry on some 30 years ago !


Yep! You are absolutely right there on all counts.

Photoperiod and daily cycling are hugely important (even to us - there's a reason we feel down on dark days and experience seasonal affective disorder). Light affects a number of hormones via our pineal gland and brain associated with everything from stress, circadian rhythms, activity levels, mood and even fertility - for example having a cycle of dark and light is what stimulates the melatonin/ serotonin cycle. These effects are felt by humans but are magnified in reptiles. It's why we are so strongly in favour of a light cycle and provision of UV and also 'full spectrum' light.

What is really interesting are the recent studies showing just how dark it is in the average household room or inside a terrarium compared to being outside even on a comparatively cloudy day. Even for human beings it is being found low light levels may be impacting our own activity and moods. I can only imagine what effect it is having on reptiles kept completely in the dark.


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## Malc

Anyone currently watching the ITV program on animal intelligence - showing how a lizards and tortoises learn by example - Interesting


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## Thrasops

Malc said:


> Anyone currently watching the ITV program on animal intelligence - showing how a lizards and tortoises learn by example - Interesting


I missed it (don't have TV). Anna Wilkinson has brought out some good studies showing Red Footed tortoises and Bearded dragons learn by watching one another though, I believe there is also strong evidence for it in water snakes (Nerodia) and Hognoses (gaze following). Young Iguanas are known to do it too.

When I was young I hatched out a litter of 17 baby Grass snakes. I housed them all together in a glass tank and witnessed something that for years I kept quiet for fear of being accused of anthropomorphism. One of the snakes learned that if it slithered through a water bowl it could then climb up the glass (presumably by creating a suction effect beneath its wet belly scales). I watched one afternoon as it tried to scale the glass, fell, slithered through the water bowl, tried the climb again, and so on.

That was the first time I noticed it. The following day _all_ the snakes were doing it though. It is said water snakes do learn to do this as babies to climb smooth plants. But the time between one learning and all learning to me seemed incredible.

It was only more recently when I started reading more about learning in reptiles that I realised this _might_ have been the animals learning from watching their conspecific.


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