Lack of excercise=Health problems?

I have been reading many posts and info. about snake ailments like egg binding, impaction, feeding problems, stress,ect. and I'm wondering how much of this could be due to lack of excercise. We know what happens to our health and for that matter any animals health when there is no activity, so wouldn't the same apply to our snakes? I find it hard to believe that if food and water were provided at the doorstep of a wild snake the it would just stay curled up in a 12x20 space and never go sprinting around! I let ours swim for 10 minutes every other day, as I know some others do also, but can this really compare to thier natural activity levels? Most of our snakes are also fed F/T so they don't even have to constrict thier food. Can this be causing a lack of muscle tone,or could the act of constricting help digestion in some way that we aren't aware of? Now I know that the primary objective of a wild snake is to conserve energy, but are we carrying this too far, putting them in cages where there is little to no need for much movement at all. I would love to know from people with experience with wild caught if they have more or better muscle tone, digestion, and are they as likely to become egg bound? And to the people that have MANY snakes do you see any physical differences between the snakes left primarily in thier cages to ones you consider pets, that are handled more?

OK Ramling over!!! Love to here everybodies opinions!

Colleen


PS> I am thinking that this may be an interesting topic for my son to do next year thesis paper on, so if anyone has info. on any research on this subject then I would appreciate it.

I know that in birds, canaries at least (I raise them), eggbinding is associated with lack of exercise. Hens that are kept in large flight cages prior to breeding will hardly ever get eggbound, but those kept in small cages have a much higher chance of eggbinding. Flight muscles assist in egglaying.

Snakes, although they don't have flight muscles, must use muscles to lay eggs, so, to me, it makes sense that lack of adequate muscle tone would translate in problems with egglaying.

Overall health is also greatly improved with exercise in mammals and birds, so it makes sense that it should also be beneficial to reptiles. They probably don't need as much of it as creatures with a higher metabolic rate. Perhaps a good swim in the tub for a snake would equate to a walk around the park for a human?

Has any research been done on the effects of exercise on snakes? Anyone have personal experience on this?

One of my areas of expertise in human medicine is exercise physiology, and I practice what I preach 7 days a week in the gym. I was so fat and unhealthy as a child and teenager that only sheer fanaticism about diet and exercise saved me starting at age 18. I got so into it that I later made money as a part-time gym personal trainer while going through medical school. My girlfriend and I are fitness and healthy eating fanatics. I practice the same with my snakes.

I'm not aware of any specific published studies on the benefits of exercise in snakes [but never ran a search for them either], but I can tell you that the physiology of all vertebrates with skeletal muscle [fish and upwards on the phylogenetic tree] is such that overfeeding and underexercising leads to biochemical, anatomical and physiological disaster internally, just like it obviously does in humans. Snakes and other animals can develop Type II diabetes, hypertension, atherosclerotic heart disease, congestive heart failure, renal failure, and all the other degenerative diseases that humans can get from the dis-ease of dis-use. Human mothers can get into a lot of trouble with vaginal childbirth if they have weak abdominal and pelvic muscles--I've seen it many times during OB/GYN rotations in training. Conversely, highly athletic women handle vaginal childbirth with ease and speed [as long as their bony pelvis dimensions are within normal limits, which is a fundamental requirement for safe vaginal childbirth].

When I got into snakes about 20 months ago, I did a lot of reading in all the good snake books and forums, and did a lot of direct observation by visiting snake shows, breeders and owners, as well as getting to know an outstanding herp vet and another snake lover/owner who is also a PhD reptile ethologist [an ethologist is a biologist who studies the interaction of an animal's behavior due to the interaction of genetics and environment]. All of my observations and conversations with these others have supported the benefits of slight underfeeding and lots of exercise.

My 2 corns and 2 garters all benefit from this approach. All have climbing branches which they get a lot of exercise on. All get an hour or more a day [2 corns at one time, 2 garters at another time] of crawling all over my arms and neck while I work at my computers. They all give me a lot of gentle to not so gentle [it never hurts] constriction as they wrap around me. Of course, none of this happens during the 48 hour no handling zone after feeding. They get a minimum of five 10 minute swims a week as well. When I play with them, I do as many manuevers as I can to make them move in all directions.

Also, I deliberately underfeed them compared to what they would eat ad lib if given as much food as they would take [more so after they were 1 year old, less so when they were very young]. My corns are around 22 months old now, and are fed 1 small adult mouse every 2 weeks. This is about half the rate of feeding that I understand most others give their corns. When they were hatchlings, I fed them about 10% less than typical, until they were 9 months old, then started cutting back. They prowl their cages and climb their branches fervently, sometimes almost constantly, for 10 hours at a time, starting about a week after they had been last fed--they're looking for food, which simulates how it is in the wild. They are both smaller than most corns would be at their age, but they are very solid and strong, and have outstanding muscle tone. This approach will also give them a much longer life expectancy.

Because I was hardheaded about wanting to keep my female Valentine and male Prince together since their time as hatchlings, they rewarded me a month ago with 6 good eggs that I wasn't expecting. I frankly made the mistake of thinking that they weren't sufficiently sexually mature from their young age--as well as having been mistakenly advised by the breeder I bought them from that they wouldn't be fertile unless they had been brumated in the winter, which I avoided. I had begun to realize through my reading on this forum that such "rules" were not a guarantee of non-breeding several months ago, but I still didn't see any trouble coming, and had taken no action to separate them. I handled Valentine nearly every day, and was unable to palpate any eggs--I simply thought her increased girth was growth, as Prince had grown in girth about the same amount in the same time.

I witnessed the entire egg-laying event to my astonishment from start to finish, which took about 60 minutes total [I think this is pretty fast for 6 eggs, but am not experienced here]. I had no idea she was gravid--she was still strong and hungry up till it happened. When I realized that a white egg was being squeezed out of her cloaca instead of a bowel movement, I freaked out, knowing that she didn't fit the "rules" on body size and weight for safe breeding and egg laying--and that she might become egg bound, which can be life-threatening. She's about 1/2 the size--160 grams non-gravid--instead of the recommended 300 grams. I would never have intentionally bred a snake this size. I prepared for emergency procedures and put others on call. Nevertheless, her very powerful musculature popped those eggs out one after another without a hitch. I could see very pronounced and powerful contraction waves going through her body as she was laying. And then she was still strong enough to start wrapping around my arm as I was removing the eggs, and she gave me some very tight squeezes on my arm. She also acted very hungry [trust me, I can tell, but that's another long story], but I waited until her post-egg-laying shed to feed her, as is recommended.

Let me make it very clear that I don't recommend breeding a corn this small in size, weight and age--but the fact that everything did go fine no doubt had to do with all of the exercise Valentine gets. I'll bet that her lean body mass--composed in large part of the muscle that does the work of egg laying--is easily as large and strong as a corn twice her overall weight and size. Most corns that I've witnessed surgery on were carrying a lot of fat--just like most humans. Obviously, this was an uncontrolled, unplanned event instead of a scientific experiment, but it does lend weight to what I think should be obvious anyway. Maybe I'll see if I can talk my radiology colleagues into doing an MRI of my corns to look at their lean muscle vs. fat mass, as I believe the resolution of the newer, stronger MRI units would be sufficient for their size.

I also inject vitamins and supplements of my own mix into the feeder mice I use [or feeder fish in the case of the garters] to simulate the mix of vitamins and micronutrients that mice feeding in the wild would be delivering when eaten by snakes. Rich Z had a very informative post on the benefits of supplementation recently. And yes, I take a lot of vitamins and supplements also, and as for my doctor friends who don't--they all look like they need some of this along with exercise themselves.

By the way, I understand that 6 eggs is a very small clutch as corn clutches go. Valentine is a small 27" long and 160 grams non-gravid at 22 months of age, and I suspect that this limited [thankfully] the number that could develop. I laid the eggs out end to end like sausages, and their total length about matched her abdominal region length available for egg carrying. I believe that the eggs were non-palpable because their flexible shells and limited number allowed them to pack end to end like sausages forced into a tube. There was no "staggering" of the stack. Also, she's was examined by me and 3 doctors and 2 vets, as well as X-rayed, and she was definitely clear of all eggs after the 6. Because I was lucky enough to witness the event [I wish I had been setup to photograph and video tape it], I was able to immediately get the eggs into damp sphagnum moss, and bought a Hovabator a day later. To help her regenerate faster, I started feeding Valentine weekly after egg laying, but will cut back to every 2 weeks after a total of 2 months or so of this. She is definitely a hungry snake.

I write all of this in the hopes that others can learn many lessons from our experiences. Once again, I recommend holding off on breeding until the female is around 300 grams or more. Some of you won't be able to arrange for as much exercise as I give my snakes, although all of you can provide climbing branches and avoid overfeeding. Word of warning--make sure your tank top is very secure with no gaps, as the climbing branches will make it even easier for them to get to the top.

Here's hoping for some cap popping hatchlings later this summer from this miracle of life!

Corn fitness, not fatness!
Doctor Mike

That was very informitave thank you. I dont have my corns yet, but will keep this in mind whne i get them

I do believe in this for my animals. The only thing is I have way to many to do what you do.

What I do is shake thier food for them so that they have to constric thier food thinking it is alive.

Thank you for your post. Frank