Roman
03-17-14, 02:14 PM
This is in reference to this thread --> http://www.ssnakess.com/forums/general-venomous-forum/101051-sad-day-my-collection.html
Hello Kimberly,
I might have gotten some interesting information about keeping Tropidolaemus wagleri. I went to a reptile zoo here in Germany last October. I did not remember your post about the loss of your Waglers viper by the time, I just stumbled over the thread right now when I was searching for something else. Anyway, when I was at that reptile zoo it was a slow day, I was the only visitor at that time and the owner/main keeper had some time to chitchat.
We were talking about venomous snakes and he mentioned that he and some friends of him had kept Tropidolaemus wagleri. I asked him how successful they had been as I knew that this snake was always problematical in captivity. He told me that they had a large breeding group. Keeping them was initially no problem after the snakes started eating, but after a view years several snakes died within a short time without any apparent sign that there might be a problem. They seemed just to die from one day to another.
So they did an autopsy to some of the snakes and they found clots of hairs in the bowls of the dead snakes. They seemed to have accumulated over some time until the clot(s) jammed the bowl more or less completely. So the conclusion was that rodents were not the usual prey of this snake and it seems not well adopted to deal with lots of hairs form its food.
Because there were no other alternatives (our local amphibians and reptiles are strictly protected) they tried another approach. Until then they had been spraying water for the snakes to drink, know they figured that this was not enough water to flush the hairs out of the system, so they were spraying lots of water (he said they were nearly drowning the snakes ;-) ) and were offering some water with long spoons. The result was that they had no sudden death any longer. It seems that the normal amount of water sufficient to quench the snakes thirst was not enough to flush the undigested hairs out of the bowls, so they accumulated and clogged the bowls.
So the way he told it it seems to be a plausible explanation for the unexpected death of their snakes and a believable solution for the problem.
I obviously don’t have any details how you kept your snake, so I am in no position to evaluate if this may or may not have been the same problem with your snake. I just thought it might be a piece of information I wanted to share with you and which might be a possible explanation for the death of your snake as well. I don’t know if this is applicable to your locality of Tropidolaemus wagleri or if there is an entirely different problem, I did not ask the keeper form where his animals originally came from.
I just checked a small German monograph about keeping Wagler’s viper in captivity (Gumprecht & Toenjes: Die Tempelotter Tropidolaemus wagleri; 2007 Natur und Tier Verlag, Muenster). The authors state that they examined the feces of several dozen wild caught specimen in their natural range. They found feather quills in nearly all samples, but only one contained some black hairs from some rodent. So the authors figured that the main prey items of adult female Tropidolaemus wagleri consists of birds and geckos, where adult males seem to prefer geckos and frogs. Rodents where only occasionally eaten.
Roman
Hello Kimberly,
I might have gotten some interesting information about keeping Tropidolaemus wagleri. I went to a reptile zoo here in Germany last October. I did not remember your post about the loss of your Waglers viper by the time, I just stumbled over the thread right now when I was searching for something else. Anyway, when I was at that reptile zoo it was a slow day, I was the only visitor at that time and the owner/main keeper had some time to chitchat.
We were talking about venomous snakes and he mentioned that he and some friends of him had kept Tropidolaemus wagleri. I asked him how successful they had been as I knew that this snake was always problematical in captivity. He told me that they had a large breeding group. Keeping them was initially no problem after the snakes started eating, but after a view years several snakes died within a short time without any apparent sign that there might be a problem. They seemed just to die from one day to another.
So they did an autopsy to some of the snakes and they found clots of hairs in the bowls of the dead snakes. They seemed to have accumulated over some time until the clot(s) jammed the bowl more or less completely. So the conclusion was that rodents were not the usual prey of this snake and it seems not well adopted to deal with lots of hairs form its food.
Because there were no other alternatives (our local amphibians and reptiles are strictly protected) they tried another approach. Until then they had been spraying water for the snakes to drink, know they figured that this was not enough water to flush the hairs out of the system, so they were spraying lots of water (he said they were nearly drowning the snakes ;-) ) and were offering some water with long spoons. The result was that they had no sudden death any longer. It seems that the normal amount of water sufficient to quench the snakes thirst was not enough to flush the undigested hairs out of the bowls, so they accumulated and clogged the bowls.
So the way he told it it seems to be a plausible explanation for the unexpected death of their snakes and a believable solution for the problem.
I obviously don’t have any details how you kept your snake, so I am in no position to evaluate if this may or may not have been the same problem with your snake. I just thought it might be a piece of information I wanted to share with you and which might be a possible explanation for the death of your snake as well. I don’t know if this is applicable to your locality of Tropidolaemus wagleri or if there is an entirely different problem, I did not ask the keeper form where his animals originally came from.
I just checked a small German monograph about keeping Wagler’s viper in captivity (Gumprecht & Toenjes: Die Tempelotter Tropidolaemus wagleri; 2007 Natur und Tier Verlag, Muenster). The authors state that they examined the feces of several dozen wild caught specimen in their natural range. They found feather quills in nearly all samples, but only one contained some black hairs from some rodent. So the authors figured that the main prey items of adult female Tropidolaemus wagleri consists of birds and geckos, where adult males seem to prefer geckos and frogs. Rodents where only occasionally eaten.
Roman