Imprinting Scent on Captive-Bred Eggs?

[tyflier]

So...I was reading an Animal Nutrition magazine at work today, and came across an interesting article. It discussed various ways to "entice" captive bred snakes away from their normal diet and towards a more readily available food source.

Specifically, they referred to captive bred King Cobras. A king cobra's diet would consist almost exclusively of other snakes in the wild. What captive breeders have done, is to "scent" the eggs roughly two weeks prior to pipping. Everyday, they would they would scent the eggs with rat odor(guts), which would heavily scent the incubation chamber of rat. Upon hatching, ALL of the snakes from the scented eggs would immediately take rats as a food source...when they wouldn't even be considered instinctually.

They also referenced several breeders of colubrids including greyband kings, hognoses, and garter snakes, where the breeders scented the eggs with mouse pinkies...and never had a refusal from scented hatchlings.

It sounds like an imprinting mechanism, where the snakes become so familiar with the odor of the intended prey, that they become programmed to accept prey that would otherwise be outside of their instinctual realm of food.

Anyone have opinions on this practice? Anyone tried it? I'm considering implementing it when I start breeding greyband kings...but that is still a couple years off.

 

[Flagg]

Sounds interesting... but I would worry about mold and bacteria growth. I guess if you kept the scenting materials (guts) nearby but not touching the actual eggs or substrate.

 

[Nanci]

I can see that working. I wonder if you could use a less drastic measure than guts- say very dirty bedding.

Nanci

 

[Susan]

Sounds like an interesting project! I had a couple of clutches with a high percentage of problem feeders (anole scented preference) that I might try this on. I have plenty of dirty mouse bedding I could use. I may simply put a small dish containing some in the incubation container of next year's clutches from those females, just to see what happens. All I have to do now is simply remember to do it!

Just send myself an e-mail linking this thread. If I keep it marked as unread, I may actually remember!

 

[Flagg]

Susan -

Was it your pewter clutches? =)

 

[tyflier]

OK...I think I misled you guys. The article wasn't talking about putting scented materials in the incubation chamber...they are actually scenting the egg shells.

Apparently, they take a sponge dipped in water that the guts are soaking in, and draw a bead across the tops of the eggs, allowing the scent to permeate into the eggs. A MUCH more powerful imprint than bedding in the incubator, I would think.

I am not exactly sure HOW they go about it. The article said "liquid scenting material"...I am assuming(I know...probably shouldn't do that) it is a water-based "tincture", if you will, that holds a fairly large amount of odiferous substance...like a tub of warm water that has rat guts soaking in it, or something like that...

I don't know that leaving a handful of bedding in the incubator would be powerful enough to cause an imprint that can beat instinct. Any thoughts on how one would actually make a "liquid scenting material" and/or if this could hold some potential danger to the eggs that I am not seeing?

 

[mike17l]

Never heard of that, but it sounds very promising. I will definitely give it a try on a couple alterna clutches in 08.

 

[tyflier]

I'm going to bring the article home from work tonight. I will post some of the quotes from the article, so maybe you guys can help me better understand what might be happening...

 

[jazzgeek]

Chris, this would make for an excellent experiment, thanks for posting this.

Would there be an online article, perhaps? (I'll start Googling right after the "submit reply")

regards,
jazz

 

[toyah]

I'm going to bring the article home from work tonight. I will post some of the quotes from the article, so maybe you guys can help me better understand what might be happening...

That would be fantastic - thanks so much. If this proves to be viable in corn snakes then it could mean the end of a lot of non-feeders or scented feeders, which would be a wonderful thing for the people and snakes involved.

I would love to know the authors?

 

[Rich in KY]

Instead of using guts, I wonder if this would work by using live pinkies to scent the incubated eggs.

 

[Tula_Montage]

What an interesting idea. Although my concern would be that it works too well... What If you never had another non feeding corn, where would all these healthy babies go?

I don't think theres enough non feeders every year to keep the numbers down, but if all those troubled kids were perfectly healthy thats even more corns to worry about shifting, whereas its very easy to keep numbers down by culling non feeders.

For other species such as the blairs etc this is a fantastic discovery though, that would take major amounts of stress out of establishing babies. I am wondering how it would work for garters when they don't lay eggs? Do you sent the mother LOL!!?

 

[Rich in KY]

I am wondering how it would work for garters when they don't lay eggs? Do you sent the mother LOL!!?

LOL :roflmao:

 

[Drizzt80]

Sounds like an interesting project! I had a couple of clutches with a high percentage of problem feeders (anole scented preference) that I might try this on.

I think if it would be feasible to split that clutch(es) in half or thirds so you had a control, mouse guts, and/or live pinky, etc., and put them in separate incubators, it would make for an incredible comparison! I would love to try it, but I don't have a pairing that has created non-feeders with any amount of regularity . . . yet!

D80

 

[tyflier]

I think if it would be feasible to split that clutch(es) in half or thirds so you had a control, mouse guts, and/or live pinky, etc., and put them in separate incubators, it would make for an incredible comparison! I would love to try it, but I don't have a pairing that has created non-feeders with any amount of regularity . . . yet!

D80

That's a great idea! I will be breeding a pair of greybands in 2 years(Murphy willing)...hopefully someone else will experiment before that time comes, but if not...I'll split the clutch and run the results.

Tula...as for the garters...I don't know...maybe I misread that part of the article...

Also...just for clarification sake:

This was not in a medical/scientific journal of any kind. It was an article in a nutritional magazine that is sent to pet shops to help them choose which foods they want to sell and which they don't, and what new products are available. It is, basically, a marketing magazine.

With that in mind...the article was actually written in order to sell pelleted foods for reptiles, and to give shop owners enough information to reliably and accurately educate customers on the benefits of pelleted foods for reptiles. It referenced snakes because of the high nutrition densities found in both wild and captive food items. The part about imprinting scent on eggs was only a small section of the article, but it certainly got my attention.

And so...I turn to the experts for opinions. As I said...I will bring home the article so that I can make more reliable quotes, and also provide any references that are available.

 

[tyflier]

Ok...

...I just walked in the door from work...

The magazine is called "Pet Nutrition" and it is a supplement to the 2007 "Pet Business". The article is generally discussing herptile nutrition, and the saleability of pelleted foods for lizards, turtles, amphibians, etc. It uses the snakes and scenting only to describe the importance of nutritional density and scent in creating pelleted foods. Obviously, the scenting of eggs fits well with the importance of scent to reptiles and the feeding response. So here is the brief section about egg-scenting:

...An interesting aside is that prey-scent preference has been successfully researched by subjecting reptile embryos, whilst still in the egg, to a prey scent that is readily available to the captives after they hatch. This ability to imprint reptile embryos to an available prey is an important husbandry tool, as it enables a reptile keeper to provide food for species that would normally feed on prey that is difficult to provide. King Cobras, which normally prey on other snakes, can be imprinted, whilst still in the egg, with the scent of rats. Once hatched, they will then readily eat rats, which they may otherwise have been reluctant to ingest. This reptile embryo imprinting technique involves applying the liquid scent to the surface of the egg for the last two weeks of incubation. Similar results have been obtained for embryo Indigo snakes and Hognose snakes. The original research was conducted on crocodiles....

Later in the article it talks about greybands, but only very briefly and only about their "picky palate".

 

[ArpeggioAngel]

I will hopefully have two clutches of graybands next year. I am definately going to mark this thread and give it a shot.

 

[tyflier]

Please let me know how it goes. I am quite curious as to how you do it, and what the results are...

 

[Susan]

Susan -

Was it your pewter clutches? =)

Those were some, but I had a couple more as well. My female pewter keeper is eating F/T like crazy, as are several of the male charcoals het pewter. I've gotten 1 male pewter to take lizard scented and the other ate a live pinky recently (my mice FINALLY started producing).

I think if it would be feasible to split that clutch(es) in half or thirds so you had a control, mouse guts, and/or live pinky, etc., and put them in separate incubators, it would make for an incredible comparison! I would love to try it, but I don't have a pairing that has created non-feeders with any amount of regularity . . . yet!

D80

I'll see if that's a possibility when the time comes. Unfortunately, by the time I get to most of the clutches produced, the eggs are all well stuck together in a clump and I have rotten luck separating them, often losing eggs in the attempt.

 

[toyah]

I found some more information on this - sounds pretty interesting!

The work of Dr. Helga Sneddon, and other members of her team, under the supervision of Professor Peter Hepper, in the School of Psychology, Queen's University, Belfast, UK, may have established just such a technique during their research into embryonic learning. They have discovered that they can influence the feeding response of hatchling crocodiles by exposing them to manufactured food flavors before they hatch. The project was in part designed to help the captive reproduction of endangered crocodilians by encouraging an active feeding response in hatchlings, which frequently are unenthusiastic in their response to available foods.

The decision was made, for research purposes, to experiment with a flavour which would normally be entirely unnatural to a crocodile. For this reason the flavour chosen was strawberry as this could be assumed to be an abhorrent flavour for such a confirmed carnivore as a crocodile. Fruit eating crocodiles are rarely recorded, other than where incidental or accidental ingestion has taken place, although alligators have been recorded to deliberately pluck and consume fruit from overhanging branches.

The artificial strawberry flavour was painted onto the incubating crocodile eggs for an exposure period of eighteen days prior to hatching. At twelve days after hatching the baby crocodiles were offered two dishes of the same food, but with one flavoured either with the artificial strawberry flavour or artificial orange flavor. Those babies that had been exposed to the strawberry flavor before hatching ate significantly more of this food than that which was either unflavored or orange flavoured. Statistically more than six out of ten of the strawberry treated baby crocodiles voluntarily opted for the dish of food flavoured with strawberry. These baby crocodiles had already developed a taste and acceptance for strawberry flavour before they had ever eaten for the first time.

As the research team stated," Results (taking clutch variation directly into account) showed that crocodiles exposed to strawberry before hatching showed a significant postnatal preference for strawberry flavoured food. This preference did not generalise to novel stimuli such as orange and was specific to the stimulus used for embryonic exposure."