The reason why those temps aren't safe is because they will overheat the whole viv to above the safe cool temps, unless the viv is bigger than average. Even then it will just be an unnecessary waste of electricity, because the snake won't go near the hot spot at those temps.

 

the good thing about large (and high) caging for relatively small active species is you can have a high temp local basking spot, (with the source isolated/ideally external) and with a well thought out branch/platform system the specimens can approach the heat as close as they want, or stay around its perimeter (its temperature perimeter). iv seen garters in piles in just such a setup, and throughout the day, the week, the months u notice patterns, patterns of sex, size, food intake, age, shed status, dominance etc etc as to how close they want to get to the blazing heat, and who gets which spot (also if their sat on, or if they do the sitting, that was weird), easily 35oc and up.

there is no better way to see a spectrum of interesting behaviors, especially in garters as they have their own little social order too in the above setup, the basking spot to garters is like the waterhole on the Savanna, all life congregates around it, except there's no cute gazelle fawns but a bunch of beady eyed garters watching you to see if its feeding time :2thumb:

i think L.Trutnau measured in the coils of a gravid retic (in a giant version of the above setup) and she was around 39-40oc, by choice.

rgds
ed

 

the good thing about large (and high) caging for relatively small active species is you can have a high temp local basking spot, (with the source isolated/ideally external) and with a well thought out branch/platform system the specimens can approach the heat as close as they want, or stay around its perimeter (its temperature perimeter). Iv seen garters in piles in just such a setup, and throughout the day, the week, the months u notice patterns, patterns of sex, size, food intake, age, shed status, dominance etc etc as to how close they want to get to the blazing heat, and who gets which spot (also if their sat on, or if they do the sitting, that was weird), easily 35oc and up.

There is no better way to see a spectrum of interesting behaviors, especially in garters as they have their own little social order too in the above setup, the basking spot to garters is like the waterhole on the savanna, all life congregates around it, except there's no cute gazelle fawns but a bunch of beady eyed garters watching you to see if its feeding time :2thumb:

I think l.trutnau measured in the coils of a gravid retic (in a giant version of the above setup) and she was around 39-40oc, by choice.

Rgds
ed

/\ this.

 

It basically comes down to whether or not you are able to provide a correspondingly cool area on the other side of the thermal gradient. Personally I am dead set against the "by the numbers" style of keeping and prefer to offer a wider thermal gradient for many of my temperate or desert animals (tropical species on the other hand will often be used to more constant temperatures).

This is one of the reasons why I like glass vivs over wooden vivs - in a wooden viv, unless it is extremely well ventilated or rather large, it can become hard to create a decent thermal gradient featuring a high basking spot and a cool area that is room temperature. This is one of the biggest limitations of the medium in my opinion. In a glass viv on the other hand with a mesh lid and/or ventilation holes in the sides, it is possible to have a high basking spot on one side and due to the nature of the material just a few inches away the temperature will be much lower.

Granted, many snakes won't expose them to high temperatures for long (in fact in a lot of warm areas you have to wait for cool days to have the best chances of seeing them active), but for other species, (Whip Snakes and Psammophiids come to mind) a high basking spot is beneficial - I provide a hot spot of 55c to 60c for my Coachwhips, for example, having asked field herpers in America to measure surface temperatures used by wild examples. The cool side goes down to 28c.

Corn Snakes don't need temperatures anywhere near that high, but there is nothing stopping you providing a higher basking spot than 30c (35-40c is fine) AS LONG as they can also escape the heat and there is a gradient down to room temperature.

 

Corn Snakes don't need temperatures anywhere near that high, but there is nothing stopping you providing a higher basking spot than 30c (35-40c is fine) AS LONG as they can also escape the heat and there is a gradient down to room temperature.

This is the key. I use a trough ceramic in a box mounted half way down the rear panel at one end of the vivarium. This gives a hot spot of 32c (measured with an IR laser temp gun) on the substrate below. However, the surface of the box that acts as a shelf averages 41c, but on one occasion she took advantage of this heat for an hour or so before moving off to a cooler area of the viv.

The two probes that measure temperature in my vivs are about 1 metre apart and its interesting to note that during the winter / spring / autumn months the cool side is typically 8c-11c cooler than the hot spot. But yesterday with this heatwave we are experiencing, the cool end was almost as warm as the hot spot. In fact the top viv reached 31c cool and 32c hot with the stat actually switching off. Needless to say all (apart from the royal above who loves the heat) were at the cool end, but didn't show signs of stress.

I personally think we get hung up on the maintaining a steady hot spot. As Thrasops has stated, in the wild surface temperatures reach far more than the 32c we state as being the ideal temperature. Some species will benefit from higher temperatures, provided they can also locate a cooler area, which will only be available if the enclosure is large enough to provide that thermal gradient. It will be down to the individual to research the temperature range as part of the requirements for the intended species. If in the wild a snake species is seen warming up on rocks or roads that are 35c - 40c or 50c then having a hot spot where a rock or stone reaches 40c would be fine, provided there is an area where the snake can cool off. Now it may be that the cool area in the wild is 30C, so if the cool area reaches that in captivity we need not worry.

 

40 C is getting up to a point that will kill most temperate zone snakes in 15 minutes or so. This includes rattlesnakes living in the deserts of the southwestern USA. 35 C can be injurious to a snake's health.

For what it's worth, hot tub manufacturers set the maximum water temperature at 35 C because higher temperatures can be injurious to human health.