There is of course sense in what your saying, but there are too many unknowns to advocate it with a good enough degree of certainty;
- We do not understand to full biological processes attached to basking / thermoregulating. We don't know if there's a purpose for them bringing their body temperatures above optimal for short times, or below optimal, without medical research into that area. We do know they benefit from certain types of radiation (UVA/B, IR-A, B, C) and particularly the IR range cannot be given without creating a hot zone. Heat from IR is used for a lot of metabolic processes and support the immune system. Now in a sterile environment this could be less of an issue, but it doesn't advocate good health
- We do not know the optimal body temperature for x species of reptiles, and even if we do know this temperature, how do we know we are giving the right temperature without inserting some sort of probe into the reptile, after all they can't regulate their own if we give them 1 temperature to deal with
- It is inherit behavior of the reptile to bask and cool down, this is their lifestyle, be it forced upon them, by choice, or whatever reason. They have been doing so successfully for a very very long time. If it would of been a sub-optimal method for their biology, they would of long ago evolved into warm blooded animals or became extinct as a result. Yet they thrive and do just fine with this method
Overall the research and evidences that this is a proper way to keep your animals is not there. If one would research it and come with the proper evidences to substantiate this way of keeping, then sure. People keep water monitors in a rack, and they do fine in a rack too. Is it OK? People give supplements containing D3 for animals that need UV light so that they do not need to give UV light, again the animal will do fine, but it's not OK. I'm very skeptic on methods that just rub me the wrong way because my common sense is screaming inside of me. It's just how I am build I guess, so I'm pretty skeptic of this because of that. I just hope people don't take it as hard headed or offensive, I usually seem to get that
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