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Old 01-09-14, 07:20 PM   #11
Pirarucu
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Re: Stage 3 (Dry Season)

Quote:
Originally Posted by formica View Post
When an animals metabolism changes, all sorts of things change in its physiology, and for many animals, the changes can be very important and beneficial.

When a monitor is forced to escape the harsh above ground conditions, to the cool humid conditions of a burrow, its metabolism slows, simply because it is cooled down, this might be important, after all, they do it for months at a time, and nature does not do things simply for the sake of it, it takes advantage of everything in its environment and adapts to those conditions in ways which often are not apparently logically, at first - we dont know, it hasnt been studied in monitors, or if it has, I havent found it published anywhere, nor has anyone that I have asked about it - but it has been studied in many other , reptiles, mammals and invertebrates, and in some cases been found to not only be beneficial, but in some cases, essential

If food is withheld, but the same temperature and humidity is provided, it will not force the monitor to retreat to a cool and humid area, because it will remain active and searching for food, therefore its metabolism will not change, and so the physiological changes associated with a lowered metabolism, which it has evolved to deal with and which may have a beneficial affect (as it does in many other animals), do not occur.

I have been asking for months, for people to give me tempreture readings from inside burrows, and have gathered as many as I could from peoples wild observations, and used them to come up with the model for the cool and humid burrowing area to which my Sav can escape too from the dry and hot area

Testing DNA repair is not practical or within my budget, although testing for the hormones involved might be, i plan on discussing that with the vet tomorrow


How will i know if its successful? Well you are right, it is very difficult to give a firm answer to that, there could be obvious positives or obvious negatives, or there may be no discernible differences. time will tell
Here's my problem with what you are saying. Your decision is based entirely on your presumption that you need to force them to go and cool down. Why not simply provide an opportunity to cool down (burrows) and not mess with above ground conditions? While your response will, I'm sure, be about the need to trigger the behavior with an environmental change, I'd like to bring up a point you mentioned in the last thread this idea was discussed in.
Quote:
Originally Posted by formica View Post
DB has noted on his website (mampam i think?), that some monitors have been known to spend weeks on end in cool areas of a house, when given the run of the house, not moving, not eating, just chilling, literally, in the cool spot, even when hotter is available, and then after a while going back to the warm area to resume normal life, DB noted that this may well have been an intentional 'brumnation'/'aestivatin' by the monitor
If they will go and stay in the cool spot intentionally and voluntarily, even when conditions are not changed, why would one attempt to force the behavior?
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