So when I drink water I always like cold water even if I’m in a cold environment. But that makes sense because I’m a warm blooded creature.

On the other hand snakes are cold blooded and they require external warmth so I could see them prefering warm drinking water. At the same time though, in a natural environment any water they drank would be cooler than the air so maybe cooler water would feel more normal. Also in a properly setup terarium a snake has ample access to warmth from other sources so they don’t really need the additional heat from warm drinking water so maybe having cool water would be a nice change and allow better temp regulation. But warm water also has the side benefit of helping boost humidity.

Anyways, this is just what I decided to overthink today. I’m also not talking actually hot or cold, just lukewarm or cool. What do you all think? Would my pet snake prefer to have their water dish topped up with cool or warm water?

  • mortimer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    491·
    6 days ago

    I can see an experiment coming on. Give your snake two dishes and see which it prefers.

    • Canonical_Warlock@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      24·
      6 days ago

      I have been thinking that all day. But to do it properly I need a bigger terrarium and some more supplies. You can’t have the dishes be different sizes or that’s an additional variable. But I also want to keep a big enough dish that they can soak in it. They never actually do because I keep the humidity high enough but they should still have the option.

      So I need to have a large terrarium with several identical water basins all in the same area. 3 basins would work (warm, room temp, and cool) but ideally I would have several set to various specific temps. Each basin should be able to be heated and cooled to reach a set water temp and which basin has which temp of water needs to be shuffled ocasionally to eliminate selection based on exact basin location or similar variables. That heating and cooling could easily be acheived with a peltier module and a temp sensor on each basin linked to a controller. You would also need a camera to view which basin the snake actually uses.

      Of course I already know what would happen. I would spend a couple hundred dollars setting all that up only to learn that my single braincell possessing snake would only ever use the closest basin.

      • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
        17·
        5 days ago

        for the record, if you happen to be near a zoo with a snake house (or that has snakes,) you could probably ask the zookeeper. If they didn’t know already they have snakes and probably wouldn’t mind setting that up. (they also probably have multiple identical dishes and such like.)

        well. I suppose that could be an email, if you happen to be not close. But if you are, I’ve never met a zookeeper that didn’t love to talk about their animals and answer random questions like that.

        well, there was one awkward moment. suffice it to say, that telling 7 yo’s a horse is masturbating is not a conversation anyone wants to have.

      • lordnikon@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        6 days ago

        A few more variables to think about is you would have to keep the heated water at that warmer temperature the whole time. Plus also noting the ambient temperature to graph with each event.

        • Canonical_Warlock@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
          2·
          5 days ago

          Oh yeah, basically the easiest way to do it would to pump water out of each basin, through a heat exchanger, and then back into the basin. That way you could have your whole temp control aparatus located outside of the terrarium. Plus that would also easily enable automatic water level management to keep the water levels identical. For your heat exchanger you could just use a CPU water block and a peltier device. You regulate the power going to the peltier device by monitoring a temp sensor in your water return pipe and just pulsing the peltier device on and off at different rates to control the heating or cooling rate. Plus with the peltier device you can just reverse the polarity to switch from heating to cooling to enable the shuffling of the basins. All of this would be controlled and charted in a csv file by a raspberry pi. Additionally you could connect a simple motion sensor so the pi could flag the times the snake was using one of the basins to make it easier to read the data.

          Rather than monitoring ambient temp or humidity you would probably be better off just keeping them tightly controlled and constant via other systems. That would further reduce variables for the initial test.