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New Caging Ideas
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by Chance on March 31, 2002
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Hello everyone. I'm not currently a keeper of hots, however I have been extremely interested in reptiles for the majority of my life and have handled countless animals, venomous and non, and plan to, within the next few years, begin to keep them. I'm planning on starting out with Agkistrodon, as I live in Arkansas and they would be relatively easy to acquire without having to import or wild collect. I'm also about to start working with my zoology lab instructor with his two copperheads and young cottonmouth, on handling, feeding, cleaning cages, etc (although, after speaking with the man on many an occasion, I'm just about convinced that the only thing he'll be able to teach me are the 'common sense' aspects).
But, to get to the point of this, I've been thinking a lot here recently about how to make keeping these animals even safer. I'm by no means no inventor, but I have came up with quite a few good ideas in my short 19 years. This one involves a new type of cage that would make a certain factor of keeping these animals just that much safer. Now, of course I'm not going to sit here and describe to the web my idea (I'm not quite THAT naive), but I'm needing to know a few things. How would I be able to find out if this this is already out there, and if it isn't, how would I be able to get it in my "clutches" so that no one else grabs it out from under me? I'm guessing that the specificity (is that a word?) of my idea would make it illogical to market to the majority of the public, but I firmly believe that many of you people might like to have something like this (I know I sure as you know what would, especially when I work my way up to the more dangerous animals). So that being that, I'm just not sure as to who to contact, because I doubt that big patenting companies would be interested. Any information anyone can supply would be extremely appreciated. Sorry for the long-windedness of this post.
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RE: New Caging Ideas
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by CollegeRattler on April 1, 2002
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Hey Man,
I think you want to search for a patent(sp?). I've heard there are patent search companies that check for you but I also think there are websites that do this aswell. Try patentsearch.com but I haven't tried so if it doesn't work I'm sorry.
On another note, What school do you attend? I'm a zoology student as Oklahoma State. I'm a labratory assistant in the Venomous Snake Lab. I also keep a few species of crotalids myself. I'm 19 too, if you even wanna talk snakes lemme know.
Good luck,
T.C.
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RE: New Caging Ideas
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by Chance on April 1, 2002
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Hey, thanks for the advice. I've searched the web for some patenting info, and so far all I've been able to discover is that patenting can cost upwards of $4500 to $16000, so if that's the case, to heck with it. Anyway, I attend Arkansas Tech University. It's certainly not the biggest school for biological studies in this state, but it's good.
I'm considering, since most people do just build their cages themselves, and I would most likely build my own too, just describing on here my idea. If enough people want me to, I'll go ahead and invest the time and wrist muscles to type out the description. I guess if I could possibly save someone's life by my idea, it'd be worth not patenting it, especially when looking at all the crap one has to go through to get something like that accomplished.
Back to the person that responded to me, feel free to e-mail me at my addy, jcdsnare@cswnet.com, if you wanna talk. I'd totally be interested in talking to someone around my age that keeps these animals. Also, are you going to the Tulsa Expo? I'm planning to, and possibly am going to acquire a small herp to keep in my room (though I'm not sure what kind, but it won't be hot; moms, go figure, if you've seen my picture, you'll see my house bobcat Isis, so sure, she'll let me raise a bobcat from a kit to a subadult in the house, but no snakes, ever). Anyway, I look forward to talking to you.
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RE: New Caging Ideas
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by ADAMS on April 1, 2002
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The most reliable way to obtain a patent is going to a patent attorney with your idea. Unfortunately, it's very expensive. I was quoted $4000 about a year ago. Part of that fee involves a patent search which can be very tedious and time consuming.
You could do it yourself, it's a very complicated process, and it still costs money. It can also be a very LONG term project. A good place to start is the book "Patent It Yourself". I think it costs around $70.
If you decide not to persue a patent, I hope you'll share your idea with us anyway...especially if it's safer...we'd all like to know what it is!
ADAMS
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RE: New Caging Ideas
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by Chance on April 2, 2002
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After looking around on the net and hearing what some people had to say I think I'll just fore-go trying to obtain a patent. It'd take me forever anyway, as it appears that I simply do not have anywhere near the funds to do so. So let me see if I can explain what I had in mind in a way that would be understandable. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask me, my e-mail is listed on my profile I believe. And if anyone has ever came up with this before, I'm sorry, I'm not trying to take credit for your work. I've just never heard of this before, and I'm actually quite surprised that no one has ever patented this before.
My friend and I were sitting around talking about feeding these animals and the danger involved, especially when working with super-snake strikers such as Bitis, or extremely active feeders like mambas or taipans. What I thought of was a way to feed these snakes where there is absolutely no possibility of contact between you and the animal. Here is what I thought of. Picture a normal cage with flat sides and a flat top. Now picture two smaller boxes. Attach one to the top, and one to one of the sides. Although there is a danger in it, some people still like to feel their animals live food, if not just every once in a while to keep the snake on it's "toes" (err, something like that). For live food, picture the box on the side. This box would be as large as a person would need, depending on the size of the animal being fed and therefore the size of the prey. A person would open this exterior box and drop in the prey. Then the lid would be shut. A small opening would be made into the side of the cage, connecting the box to the cage. This opening would be shut until the prey was safely dropped into the box and the lid was shut. Then, from an exterior pully, or latching system, or something like that, that opening would be open. Now for some snakes this is all it would take. The mouse, rat, rabbit, etc, would be smelled and the snake would go after it. The hole between the cage and box would of course be large enough that the snake could fit the first part of it's body through if it wanted to. Some snakes, however, are more "lazy" hunters. Again I use the example of Bitis. They would be more inclinde to wait on the prey to come to them. In this case, the exterior box has a back wall that moves. It would have a knob on it as a handle, and the keeper could gentley puch the wall inward toward the cage until the mouse, rat, rabbit, etc was forced into the cage with the waiting snake. At this time the opening between the cage and box would be shut, and the back wall would be pulled back into it's original position. Incase you want to know how the back wall moves, picture each of the sides kind of extending inward at their ends. The back wall would fit inside the box, and because each side would present a barrier, the back wall could not be pushed out of the box, resulting in escape or prey, or worse, hungry snake. Now that probably wasn't a very good description of that movable wall, but I don't know of any other way to word it. So if that confused anyone, just let me know and I'll try again.
Ok, so now I've explain that side box for the live food. Of course, most people choose to feed their herps prekilled food to prevent injury to the herp, or because it's more humane, or whatever a person's reasons are. This is where the top box comes in. It's quite a bit more simple than the side box to explain. You simply open the top of the box and drop in whatever dead animal you're going to feed the snake. Then you shut the lid and slide the movable 'floor' of the box until the prey drops into the cage. Slide the floor back into place, and the snake enjoys a prekilled meal.
Now so far I've only been able to come up with a couple of things that these might not cover. One, some snakes are very hesitant to eat prekilled food. If the owner doesn't want to feed live, what he/she usually employs is manual manipulation of the dead animal to make the snake thing that it's alive. This box system would make that either impossible or very tough to do while still keeping an absolute barrier between you and the snake. Another problem is with the top box. Doing this, the dead prey literally falls into the cage. This would mean that substrade and accesorie placing would have to be precise, so that say, the dead rat doesn't fall into the snake's water. Also, when the snake becomes accustomed to eating it's prey that rains from above, it'll probably position itself just below the drop zone at some point. In this case, the prey would drop onto the snake itself. I can't really think of any way this would hurt the animal, because you of course would feed prey according to the size of the snake (so you wouldn't drop an adult rat onto a neonate cobra, etc). But I'm sure someone could come up with a way this might injur the snake.
So, if anyone has any solutions to the above problems, feel free to speak up. Any ideas are ever so more than welcome.
I'm thinking maybe I should have tried to post this as an article, to get more people to see it. Oh well, hopefully enough will see this. Again, if someone has already came up with these ideas, sorry, I'm not trying to infringe. That should be obvious though because I'm on here telling everyone about it, rather than trying to go patent it for myself. And also, I'm very sorry about the length of this. I realize it's a short novel, but I couldn't word it any shorter and not many people saying "what the....?". So comments are welcome! Speak up!
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