Quote:
Originally Posted by Pirarucu
I believe that this is an extremely unnecessary and potentially risky undertaking, mainly because it accomplishes nothing. They whether the dry season because they have to, not because it is good for them. Case in point, Ghana's dry season is far shorter than countries such as senegal, and the Savs are much more common in Ghana, as they are not restricted to areas around water like the ones in Senegal. Moreover, changing the environment serves no purpose, even assuming withholding food has the benefits you suggested. The reason is that they whether the dry season by staying where it is still humid as much as possible, using their burrows. It does not change the environment they will keep themselves in, it just limits their use of the cage.
If you are going with the assumption that withholding food helps them repair their DNA (and I still don't see the links you said you would be posting) why not stop feeding while leaving their environment the same? Why unnecessarily subject them to harsh conditions that they try their utmost to avoid?
I'll be interested to see your results, but I'm not sure how you intend to determine whether you have been "successful" or not, without having a larger test group, the DNA testing, or having owned savs using conventional methods already to have a base line.
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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
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