On The Relative Intelligence of Snakes* (Ramón is Dumb)

*Please take most of this information with a grain of salt. I did a fair amount of research, but I am in no way an expert. If I'm wrong on anything, don't hesitate to comment and let me know.

Johno and I once had a discussion on the intelligence of snakes (i.e, pattern recognition, memories, feelings). I hadn't done much of my own research on the matter but to me (at least, at first), they seemed like quite conscious creatures. Observing your surrounding and understanding how to react to them is also a part of it. Snakes, by their natures, are generally shy but observant. A case of the watched watching the watchers. I mean, surely with all their advantageous senses they would be somewhat intelligent?

Looking right into your soul.

However...

After some research I realised that snakes were not the cunning thinkers I thought they were. Rather, they apparently turned out to be not much more intelligent than goldfish. They are opportunistic feeders, and won't really take much stead in feed patterns. Though they might realise, over time, that a certain movement equates to feeding - much like how fish will eventually learn that opening of the fishtank lid means food - I think it would take much longer for a snake to learn the same principle as they are fed much, much less often than fish. Whether that means it's "learned" anything is questionable, though. 

It's a lot cuter if you imagine a big question mark above his head.

They also actively ignore food in preparation for a shed. Instinct? Surely. Intelligence? Probably not. Though they are actively making a decision that would affect them later, I'm relatively certain that not much thought goes into it. 

 It was like watching a fat woman walk straight past a buffet table without even looking.

Also on the topic of their extra senses - it doesn't really make them any more intelligent. They have a tiny brain to begin with (in comparison to their body, unlike us fathead humans) and most likely, a lot of their thought process is taken up by other functions. Monitoring body temperature would be one, and also processing information coming in from their Jacobson's organ. In exchange they have extremely poor eyesight. 

They can see relative movement - some people say they can see shape at 1m, and movement at 5m. Most people say if you stay still enough that a snake can't distinguish you from the background - which I say is fair, I mean their eyes are meant to detect 360° danger [movement], but positioning of their eyes just wouldn't allow for 3D perception as easily as ours.

Unless you were right in front of it.

It's probably why they always line up their head before they strike - it's the only point in their vision where their peripherals overlap and allow them to perceive depth.

There's also a heap of anecdotal evidence that people have offered to argue the case of snake intelligence. But, anecdotal evidence is really no evidence at all without scientific backing. That's not to say that I disagree with people have an ephemeral connection to their pets. I just don't know what to say if they expect the snake to have reciprocal feelings.

Either way, snakes are good at what they do. They are wonderfully adaptive hunters and overall beautiful creatures. It doesn't matter to me that I basically own an elongated, terrestrial, fin-less goldfish.

..well, most of the time.

 ANYWAY HE'S MUCH MORE BADASS THAN ANY FISH SO SHUT UP.

Happy Slough Day!!

Yesterday I check on Ramón and got a wonderful surprise! We have been eagerly awaiting his first shed for the last two weeks. He hadn't fed since the 12th (snakes go off food when preparing to shed), so I was beginning to get a little worried. Thankfully, my worries were for nothing.

5 days prior to shed

Snakes shed their skin for various reasons, but mainly for physical growth. A few days before shed, their scales appear pale and dusty, and their eyes become cloudy (outer skin separating from the new skin). Some snakes will appear to return back to normal (caused by oils needed to lubricate skin during shed). They will also become somewhat moodier than normal (i.e., more defensive, because they can't see very well).

Very cloudy eyes and dull scales, 3 days prior to shed

They're usually still okay to handle so long as you're particularly gentle and don't keep them out too long. I bathed Ramón by handling him in a large container of warm water and soaking him for about 15 minutes to help loosen the skin. I also covered half of the front grill to help the humidity remain consistently around 75%.

Testing the water.

I was kind of apprehensive about being so "involved" with the process but I must have done something right, as he shed in one complete piece!

Hooray!

After we discovered he'd shed, we immediately warmed up a rat for him. It took a little coaxing but he eventually downed it.

Fatty.

I'm now much happier knowing my boy is shed, fed and all shiny new!

Except, you know, when he gets cranky after eating.

Macro Maculosa

Just some pretty photos of Ramón.

Droop~

My favourite photo of him so far.

I like the way his scales look in this one :3

Feeding~

Om nom nom

Observing us observing him

Posing for his [surrogate] dad.

Mister Underhill (Or Mister Undermat, as it were)

Ramón is a terrestrial snake. Though he does seem to appreciate his vivarium branches, more often than not he'll be on the ground if he doesn't want to be disturbed. Usually right in the back corner behind the larger bamboo hide (not in it, squeezed in behind  it).

Popping out from behind aforementioned hide

So it doesn't particularly worry me if I can't see him if I pop over to check on him. Right now he'll be either behind the bamboo hide, or in his other rock one (they're both on the warm side).

Sliding in

Then there were 3 consecutive days where he was just.. not around. Two days I could understand, but three started to worry me. I grabbed the torch and had a peep into his hides, expecting him to be hiding in his rock.. but all I could see was substrate.

I checked behind the bamboo hide. No, not there either. Maybe he's on the cool end. Not in the Batcave. Not under the bridge. My heart starts fluttering.

I'm trying to stay calm. There's no way he could have gotten out. He must just be hiding under the substrate somewhere. I poke around, hoping to disturb him wherever he may be.

Still nothing. I'm freaking out. How the hell did he get out? Where would he be now? Maybe he crawled into the spare substrate under the viv? I carefully start pulling out substrate from the vivarium, though my heart is starting to break a little.

Eventually I've taken all the substrate out and he's not there. I'm devastated. I'm trying to remember the last time I saw him. And then I look at the wooden mat that we taped down over the heat cord and I think, "He used to have this habit of crawling under paper towel in his click clack [plastic enclosure we got him in]... oh wait on, no fucking way."

This is how we had initally proposed to stop Ramón from getting under the mat in the first place:

Lots of masking tape.

I ripped up the tape - lo and behold, there he was, snuggled right up to the heat cord. He had circumvented the tape by digging through the substrate that we had tightly packed around the base of the leftmost tree branch ["He won't get through that."]. Little bastard.

Needless to say I was extremely relieved. It took a little coaxing to get him out from under there - I put him back into his old click clack and  took the opportunity to clean down the vivarium. I also taped the mat down again - this time, including around the branch.

Ain't no snake getting under this time.

I wasn't going to take any chances.

Since my retaping he hasn't disappeared again. If, by some power, he ends up under there again - and dies from dehydration or whatever - I'm probably going to be really upset, but frankly, the Darwin files deserve that one.

Home Sweet Home (Part 2)

So now that we had the vivarium built, it seemed to us that it was looking a little.. plain. It needed a little pizzazz. A little je ne sais quoi. 

Le boring.

We collaborated on the background - I found a nice jungley photo (the one in the background of this blog) and trimmed it to spec, which Johno had printed at his work. Took him about an hour (or less) to put it on, even going over the vents to cover them. It came out beautifully!

Ooooooooh!

The current hides, we realised, were going to be too small for Ramón when he reached adulthood, but looking around (in pet stores and online) it seemed as though there weren't really many cost-effective ones that we liked. So off we went to Kmart to see if we could find something a little more suitable. A turned-over pot would have done nicely, but it wouldn't really have fit with the aesthetic we wanted for the vivarium. We did, however, find a very ingenious cold-hide :3

NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA

The eye-holes were open when we bought it, so Johno popped the lenses out of an old pair of sunnies and hot-glued them in. It is now dubbed the Batcave. We also found a nice bamboo utensil-holder (made for holding ladles and other stuff) in the kitchen section which we thought could serve nicely as a larger hide for him. Unfortunately, it looked really out of place next to the rough branches and dark brown substrate. So I took to it with some paint and muddy water after we both had a go at it with saw, file and knife. 

We also cut off a part of it so that it would sit flat. 

In the picture it looks really obviously done, but..

It looks heaps good next to everything else!

His larger (he has two) water dish is just a granite feeding dish for reptiles. The substrate is Kritter's Crumble. He also has a verandah, which is basically a wooden placemat over the top of the heat cord, to stop him from coming into too much contact with the actual cord. 

The final result!

The thermometer to the right of the cage takes the temp for the cold side, as well as having a node just on the  basking spot on a knot in the leftmost branch. The heat cord is on a separate thermostat, so it keeps it well warm on the ground. It does tend to dry out quite a bit with the open front, so regular spritzing is a necessity (at least in winter) to keep the humidity above 60%.

Basking temperature node

Much easier to spritz directly through the grill. 

That was pretty much it. A few days later we put Ramón in - he was a bit wary at first but he'd fully settled in  48 hours later. 

We let him explore on his own, but it took him a while [i.e, FOREVER] to slither out.

And then of course he stayed in the toilet roll for a good half hour.

Home Sweet Home (Part 1)

Ramón's vivarium was a point of long discussion between the two of us. Even though we spent most of a week discussing it, we still ended up spending a good 4 hours in Bunnings weighing up our options. Luckily, Johno's parents gave us a simple solution.

They had recently reorganised their laundry room, which freed up an old MDF shelving unit that Johno had made for them years before. Turned on its side, it was perfect. the wood provided excellent insulation and heat/moisture resistance. We removed one of the shelves and used the other to cordon off an area for accessories storage. His parents also provided us with a large branch that was recently cut from a tree in their garden. It took us two lazy weekend afternoon session to put the vivarium together.

We cut the branch in two to make it look a little more interesting

Johno did most of the work really, cutting holes for the vents and generally doing all those handy man things that he does. I mostly helped stabilise it while he was doing those things. 

Clearly, I had the harder job.

The rest wasn't too hard to install. Since our heat lamp was caged (the girl at the store assured us that it would be safe for Ramón to be direct contact with it) we decided to seal the top with acrylic and make the front a grill to provide ventilation - mostly for the summer months when it gets quite warm. 

Storage shelf, acrylic top and grill front

Right now it's winter, so we make sure to cover the front with a towel so the vivarium stays nicely at 30°-32°C (hot end) and 18°-24°C (cool end) even when it drops below 10° at night.

Heat lamp mounted to an offcut

 The idea was to at the heat lamp on an angle at the crux of the leftmost branch so he had a nice basking spot, but also heat up the upper parts of the rightmost branch so that it would help spread and retain heat throughout the vivarium. 

Basking spot

We also bought some garden downlights (the kind you attach to fences and things) to provide some cool night lighting.

Down lights

Looks pretty good on, too.

Pimpinnnn'!

Johno also had the bright idea of sealing the top with draft stopper tape!

You can also see the internal hinges we bought. 

After all that it was simply a matter of putting all the other accessories on, like handles and locks. 

I was really more of an.. "Artistic Director".

Decorating the vivarium was a different sort of joy all in itself! To be continued!

Orientation Week

The first week after we brought him home was a tad anxious for the both of us (moreso for me, really). As expected, he was fairly cranky. It made cleaning a bit difficult, I will admit.

This is one of the calmer shots.

But after a while he'd settled in and was happy to take in the sights and smells of his new home.

Ramón at 400mm (or thereabouts)

Thankfully he fed pretty much the night after he'd come home - the breeder had informed us that he hadn't eaten for 10 days when we picked him up. He was noticably less cranky the day after.

Food baby!

 Two days after his feed we deemed him settled enough to start handling. It was nerve-wracking, picking him up with my own hands for the first time! He's quite scared a lot of the time - understandably so - but if you're gentle and patient he shows a lot of curiousity.

Although there was this one time he got a little spooked and flung himself out of Johno's hand back into his box, landing face first into the water dish. Silly snake.