How do you handle your "not-so-hot" hots?

Vanan · 09-25-03, 03:27 PM

Just wondering how some of you handle your "not-so-hot" hots, eg. hognoses, FWC's, vines etc.

Vanan · 09-25-03, 03:32 PM

Since I only own hogs as my NSH "Hot", I hook em out then handle them.

fatboy · 09-25-03, 03:53 PM

Does this include Eastern Corals....haha.

Vanan · 09-25-03, 04:53 PM

Corals are not included as they are Vipers.

Sean_.E. · 09-25-03, 04:56 PM

Personally, I do not consider w. hognoses hot and I therefore always free handle.

Mustangrde1 · 09-25-03, 04:57 PM

Since when is a Coral snake a viper? Lat i checked they fell in the elapid family. as to how I handle Vine snakes, Mangrove snakes and hog nose, i use my hands . anything else is hooks, tongs , tubes, grabbers, hemostats, snow shovels.

Sean_.E. · 09-25-03, 05:01 PM

I didn't realize that he said corals are vipers until after I posted. They definately aren't!

Vanan · 09-25-03, 05:08 PM

Oh geez guys! Noone knew that that corals are now considered to be vipers? yeesh! Yea and they also moved boomslangs to boidae!

<--Wink, for those who didn't notice it earlier.

Jeff_Favelle · 09-25-03, 05:23 PM

I saw the wink. It was as blatant as can be. Oh well.

Vanan · 09-25-03, 05:36 PM

Oh well. Now back to the question at hand.

Gregg M · 09-25-03, 08:08 PM

Hey Scott, those snow shovels come in handy for big gaboons....... One of the best investment I ever made......... Makes it soo much easier to move them around.........

JD@reptiles · 09-25-03, 09:26 PM

im a hooker

Mustangrde1 · 09-26-03, 04:11 AM

Gregg you arnt kidding and neither was I safe for both the handler and the animal. SAFTYYYYYYY FIRST.

Dr. Bryan Fry · 09-26-03, 05:15 AM

Hey guys,

The thing that scared us the most as we were doing the study was when the massive toxicity results started rolling in ... combined with none of the elapid antivenoms doing a bloody thing. We started seeing a list with names like Schmidt, Mertens, boomslang, twig snake on it...... and really didn't want to scroll down and see our names on it! Particularly once we started getting in all sorts of weird snakes not widely available. We actually had to start treating all of the 'colubrids' as hot snakes since we had no idea what we were getting into with some of them (combined with the lack of antivenom). This all started one day when the Boiga nigriceps came up as toxic as a death adder..... well unfortunately I had just donated the pair to the petting zoo! Oops ;-p Just after this, one of the lesser known Coluber species from Egypt smacked a pet store employee really bloody hard (systemic neurotoxicity). This very much caught us off guard.

Some of the ones I'd personally rate as of potentially real concern is anything in the Psammophiinae family (Psammophis, Malpolon) and I'd also treat some of the Pseudoxyrhophiinae family genera with concern (these are the Madagascar colubrids). This is due in part of previous bite reports (Psammophis, Malpolon), devastating mouse kill times for Psammophis and the genetic affinity of both families, their closest relatives is the highly toxic Atractaspidae family and also the Elapidae! They are very much 'protoelapids'. The Colubrinae family as a general rule have venoms packed full of 3FTx neurotoxins. I now give the larger Boiga much more respect than I did previously. While I don't think they would be normally capable of lethal envenomations they certainly can cause notable symptoms (I had one 2.2 meter B. dendrophila get me good and it was 'death adder-lite').

Ironically, the ones that are usually batted around as potential concerns, particularly Xenodontinae family members like Heterodon and Hydrodynastes actually appear to be of lesser concern than a lot of the others. Very sustained and vigorous chewing by both these species has certainly produced clinically relevant symptoms but not to the extent of some of the others. That said, other Xenodontinae have been shown to be lethal (e.g. Philodryas).

There's just so many bloody unknowns, particularly when considering how many of the total number have actually been widely kept (bugger all) and how many have been studied (even less).

One snake that I consistently hear from keepers as having devastating mouse kill times is Thrasops jacksoni. Not entirely suprising considering its genetic affinity to the boomslang. Does anyone here keep them? I'd be curious to hear from more keepers.

Cheers
B

PS JD, we don't hold your method of employment against you. Even rent-boys can keep herps ;-p

Vanan · 09-26-03, 10:27 AM

lol Jordan! So you still want a Psammophis now? Hehe.

I think I've heard about the Thrasops jacksoni, but there was more talk about it on the "milk"snake site.

Wohoo! So I don't have to hook them hogs anymore. Oh wait, I'd still rather not get a feeding bite regardless of toxicity, thank you very much.