We have been in shed-central for the past few weeks. First it was Slither, the Gum Zombie's anery Kenyan sand boa, who went through what I think must have been the longest shed cycle extant but came out of it beautifully shiny and perfect. Then Lucy (our female cinnamon ball python) went into blue, took a bath, and shed out about a week ago. Next, Lucy's cohort Scales, a male of the same morph, went blue and surprised us with a minimally fussy shed in one beautiful piece. Finally, there's Sarah.
Sarah is my female Kenyan sand boa, and if there was ever a snake with the intellectual capacity to hate anything, it's her... and that's saying something considering sand boas in general are a rather primitive species of snake. She's a little pistol, and there's nothing that makes her more miserable than a shed. Normally Sarah lurks below her substrate. When she goes blue, though, all bets are off. She's on top of it, laying there as if she's near death. She stares fixedly at the walls of her vivarium, refuses to enter her humid hide (Slither spent the majority of his shed sitting in a tiny tub filled with damp sphagnum moss), won't eat, and is in general a mass of misery until she's done shedding.
I swear, she's got the reptilian version of PMS.
Adding insult to injury, last time Sarah shed it was an incomplete job. Her skin came off from her neck down, but she had a "cap" of shed stuck on the top of her head and over one eye. Yipes. So that resulted in two days worth of forcing her to hang out in a humid hide for an hour each day until the shed softened enough to be carefully pulled off with a pair of tweezers.
And no, she didn't care for that either.
So here we are again with her, at Shed #2. Plus it's Feeding Time at the Zoo tonight, and as I mentioned previously Sarah doesn't like to eat while she's in blue so unless she somehow managed to shed today, she'll be an awfully hungry snake come December 27th.
As a side note, the Gum Zombie has kept both Slither and Scales' shed skins, enshrining them as if they were holy relics. My snakes' shed skins, however, he immediately claimed to donate to his science teacher. The hope is that this time Sarah will shed in one fell swoop and I can start my own skin shrine.
Ahem. Or not. I'm pretty sure his science teacher will have another opening...
Showing posts with label Terminology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Terminology. Show all posts
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Definitions and Conventions
It occurred to me that although my vocabulary and knowledge have grown by leaps and bounds in the past month (herptile? diurnal? anery? what in the...???? and how has it only been a month?), not everyone has been following along at home. Ergo, I thought it might be helpful to explain a few things here rather than endlessly break into blog entries to explain what in the world I'm talking about.
Please bear in mind that this entry is by no means static; my intention is that I will come back and add to it when the need arises. Also note that when I have lifted a definition from another site, I have hyperlinked the word I'm defining directly to that site to ensure proper attribution.
On to the meat of the matter.
Numbering
If you look over on my sidebar under "The Zoo" heading, you'll see various number strings directly below each snake's name. These are standard gender/ quantity annotations within the herptile community. For example, Sither's number is 1.0; this means he's a male and there's one of him. Sarah's number is 0.1; this means she's a female and there's one of her.
In actual practice the designation would be 1.1 Kenyan sand boas, which would mean one male (the number before the decimal) and one female (the number after the decimal), but I was going for what would make the most sense to any folks outside the reptile world and would simultaneously fit into my limited sidebar space.
Okay, I was also going for cute :P
Anyway, the same applies to Scales and Lucy. Formally, their gender/quantity would be indicated as 1.1 cinnamon ball pythons.
Sometimes we don't know the gender of an animal, and in that instance there is a third numerical slot. If Slither and Sarah produced a litter* a few years down the road, their progeny prior to sexing could be described as 0.0.15 baby sand boas. Or if some genders were obvious while others weren't (it can happen with very young sand boas), it could look something like 4.3.8, meaning 4 verified males, 3 verified females, and 8 unsexed offspring.
Definitions and Abbreviations
Anerythristic - often shortened to anery; a mutation that keeps the animal from producing erythrin, the red pigment.
Diurnal - active chiefly in the daytime. This describes none of our current snakes. They are not exciting pets on a "let's sit here and observe the snakes this afternoon" level.
Feeding Time at the Zoo - Thursday nights. God help me.
F/T - frozen/ thawed; refers to reptile food, generally rodents of an appropriate size. Also referred to as "mousicles", "mousesicles", or "ratsicles" depending on the individual and origin of the food. The mousicles are shipped in a container filled with dry ice, already frozen, and I just thaw the appropriate amount on feeding day. Consider it a small, poo-filled chicken.
Herptile - denoting, relating to, or characterizing both reptiles and amphibians.
Nocturnal - actively chiefly during the night. This would describe our animals, not only the snakes but also the cats.
Sexually Dimorphic - where the two sexes have different shapes, sizes, etc. from each other. This is the case with Kenyan sand boas. If you'll look at the picture of Slither and Sarah on my first entry and note their tails, you can see that Slither's tail is a bit more slender and gradually tapered, whereas Sarah's is a bit more "chunky" looking and has much less gradual taper.
Zombie Mouse/ Rat Dance - the dangling of an appropriately sized f/t rodent in front of the snake in a manner meant to convince the animal that its food is alive. The sand boas don't need much convincing. We'll see how this works with the ball pythons.
*Doubtful as the genetics likely won't play to their favor. The anery gene is recessive, so I'd end up with a ton of little orange sand boas, all heterozygous for anery with Dodoma genetics wandering around in there. I'm still new to this, but unless I'm planning to breed several generations out I don't see the benefit to that pairing.
Please bear in mind that this entry is by no means static; my intention is that I will come back and add to it when the need arises. Also note that when I have lifted a definition from another site, I have hyperlinked the word I'm defining directly to that site to ensure proper attribution.
On to the meat of the matter.
Numbering
If you look over on my sidebar under "The Zoo" heading, you'll see various number strings directly below each snake's name. These are standard gender/ quantity annotations within the herptile community. For example, Sither's number is 1.0; this means he's a male and there's one of him. Sarah's number is 0.1; this means she's a female and there's one of her.
In actual practice the designation would be 1.1 Kenyan sand boas, which would mean one male (the number before the decimal) and one female (the number after the decimal), but I was going for what would make the most sense to any folks outside the reptile world and would simultaneously fit into my limited sidebar space.
Okay, I was also going for cute :P
Anyway, the same applies to Scales and Lucy. Formally, their gender/quantity would be indicated as 1.1 cinnamon ball pythons.
Sometimes we don't know the gender of an animal, and in that instance there is a third numerical slot. If Slither and Sarah produced a litter* a few years down the road, their progeny prior to sexing could be described as 0.0.15 baby sand boas. Or if some genders were obvious while others weren't (it can happen with very young sand boas), it could look something like 4.3.8, meaning 4 verified males, 3 verified females, and 8 unsexed offspring.
Definitions and Abbreviations
Anerythristic - often shortened to anery; a mutation that keeps the animal from producing erythrin, the red pigment.
Diurnal - active chiefly in the daytime. This describes none of our current snakes. They are not exciting pets on a "let's sit here and observe the snakes this afternoon" level.
Feeding Time at the Zoo - Thursday nights. God help me.
F/T - frozen/ thawed; refers to reptile food, generally rodents of an appropriate size. Also referred to as "mousicles", "mousesicles", or "ratsicles" depending on the individual and origin of the food. The mousicles are shipped in a container filled with dry ice, already frozen, and I just thaw the appropriate amount on feeding day. Consider it a small, poo-filled chicken.
Herptile - denoting, relating to, or characterizing both reptiles and amphibians.
Nocturnal - actively chiefly during the night. This would describe our animals, not only the snakes but also the cats.
Sexually Dimorphic - where the two sexes have different shapes, sizes, etc. from each other. This is the case with Kenyan sand boas. If you'll look at the picture of Slither and Sarah on my first entry and note their tails, you can see that Slither's tail is a bit more slender and gradually tapered, whereas Sarah's is a bit more "chunky" looking and has much less gradual taper.
Zombie Mouse/ Rat Dance - the dangling of an appropriately sized f/t rodent in front of the snake in a manner meant to convince the animal that its food is alive. The sand boas don't need much convincing. We'll see how this works with the ball pythons.
*Doubtful as the genetics likely won't play to their favor. The anery gene is recessive, so I'd end up with a ton of little orange sand boas, all heterozygous for anery with Dodoma genetics wandering around in there. I'm still new to this, but unless I'm planning to breed several generations out I don't see the benefit to that pairing.
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