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RE: A Little Dirt Good For Your Snakes ?
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by TPalopoli on January 9, 2007
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Ummm….the original hypothesis does not make much sense from a biological standpoint. If you want to increase your probiotic gut load eat some yogurt. If you want to increase your potential for pathogenic bacterial infection or like to ingest nematodes, play in dirt.
As for the cause of captive bred reptiles being smaller than most seen in the wild my first inclination would be simple natural selection that was mentioned before. This does not just mean the neonate mortality; keep in mind that many genetically weaker adults in captivity are provided the opportunity to breed that never would have been possible for them in the wild. In fact you could hypothesize many of the genetic traits that promote prolific breeding in captivity are actually counter-productive to survival in the wild (resulting in part of the domestication process).
Of course this is assuming that captive bred reptiles are in fact smaller than their wild born counterparts. And that would take more than casual observation to conclude. It would be an interesting thesis for someone to work on though.
Tom
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RE: A Little Dirt Good For Your Snakes ?
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by MattHarris on January 14, 2007
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The idea of WC animals being genetically and physically more 'robust' isn't really a new topic. Its been debated periodically over the years. I agree with Petra and Tom, that the health of cb populations is somewhat reduced by 'babying' all neonates to feed, regardless of whether they would normally survive in the wild. I do not do this with babies, especially neonates of snakes such as Bothrops asper, which produce enormously large litters (up to 100) to account for high neonate mortality.
I have seen reports of breeders even force feeding mojave rattlesnakes, simply to keep them alive! This is insane, in that Mojave rattlesnakes aren't endangered, and therefore there's no dire need to keep them alive, save for the purpose of selling them into the private sector. Again, this is just due to selfishness and greed.
For beneficial bacteria, there is a product called "BeneBac" which can be injected into prey items to supplement the beneficial gut biota for digestion.
MH
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