Cold Blooded Chronicles
News from kingsnake.com
In this issue:
Letter from the Editor
club.kingsnake.com
Upcoming Events
Follow-up Winter preparedness
Testosterone In Iguanas
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Letter From the Editor
It's spring time. People are getting the urge to hunt the field. Do you have any great tips on finding herps? If so email us. We will share in next issue.
Things are starting to get regular. With all the great feedback from our members on the Eighth Annual Chat week, we have taken the move to begin monthly guest chats. Once a month we will bring to our members a chat from someone in the herp iIdustry. As we do for chat week, we are accepting requests. So if there is someone you would like to see here, email us a request. This doesn't mean chat week is going away, we are just adding more opportunities for our members to meet the best and brightest. And speaking of chat week, in case you have not seen it, our transcripts can be found here:
http://www.kingsnake.com/HerpChat8.html.
I would like to offer a HUGE public thank you to all of our guest for making this another successful week!
The chat guest for May is Allen Repashy. Allen Repashy has had a lifelong passion for reptiles and amphibians. He has primarily focused on keeping and breeding lizards. He first kept Rhacodactylus in the late 1980s (R. auriculatus) and has for the last ten years focused his work on this genus. He keeps the largest and most diverse collection of Rhacodactylus in the world, and is responsible for introducing R. ciliatus into the pet trade. He has also developed a complete diet for Rhacodactylus, which is readily available in the trade. Allen is co-author of the book Rhacodactylus: The complete guide to their selection and care. His current project has been building the Interactive Gecko Resource Database
Allen is currently in preparation for the New Caledonian Gecko Symposium which will occur in partnership with the NARBC Tinley event. You can learn more about the Symposium at New Caledonian Gecko Symposium(
http://www.geckosymposium.org/cms/). You can learn more about Allen at Repashy Reptiles:
http://www.reptiles.repashy.com/
The chat is scheduled for Friday May 26, 2006 at 9 PM ET. We hope to see you there. To enter the chat room go to:
http://chat.pethobbyist.com/login.php?room_name=Reptile+&+Amphibian
Along with monthly guest chats, Cold Blooded Chronicles is also going monthly. We will be able to let you know of the chats coming your way, herp events for the month, and new changes to the site much easier if we do this monthly. We do accept article submissions from members. When emailing remember to include what name you want the submission credited to. Remember some servers are now blocking emails from businesses. If you have one of those servers, please add this email address to your address book.
We have included a follow-up article submitted by one of our members for this issue on winter preparedness. The cold weather may be passing, however you now have time to prepare for next year. Power outages in the dead of winter can be fatal to our collections. Now is the time to start planning.
We have also included a short article on testosterone in iguanas. Male breeding season is one of the biggest reasons people call me to surrender their healthy adult iguanas. If you have iguanas or interest in iguanas, take a moment to read the article.
Thanks for being a part of kingsnake.com and keep watching for some great upcoming changes.
Cindy Steinle
PHFaust
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New! clubkingsnake.com
What goes better with snakes than Rock N Roll? In our second largest chat ever ,Kerry King of Slayer talked about music and snake ownership. Alice Cooper on Podcast is just too cool for School. Come check out our cooler sides at
http://club.kingsnake.com/ where you will find a variety of music (and reptile) related news.
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June Events
Reptile Show,Landgraaf, Holland,-May 25, 2006
16th annual Ziva Exótica,Chech republic, Prague,-May 27, 2006
Exotic Animal, Reptile, & Bird Swap/Sale,Valparaiso,IN-May 27, 2006
Reptile Show,Leiden, Holland,-May 28, 2006
Flamingo Gardens Reptile Expo/Alternati,Davie,FL-June 3, 2006
Kentucky Reptile Expo,Shelbyville,KY-June 3, 2006
Next Generation Exotic Pet Expo,Tunica,MS-June 3-4, 2006
Northwestern Berks Reptile Show & Sale,Hamburg,PA-June 3, 2006
Reptile Swap,Streamwood,IL-June 3, 2006
St. Louis Reptile Breeders Expo & Sale,St. Louis,MO-June 4, 2006
West Michigan Reptile Expo,Grand Rapids,MI-June 4, 2006
Western Pennsylvania Reptile Expo,Butler,PA-June 4, 2006
The Geckophile Gathering 2006,Austin,TX-June 9-11, 2006
16th annual Ziva Exótica,Chech republic, Prague,-June 10, 2006
All Maryland Reptile Show,Havre de Grace,MD-June 10, 2006
All Ohio Reptile Show,Columbus,OH-June 10, 2006
Michigan Reptile Show,Taylor,MI-June 10, 2006
Ontario Reptile Expo,Mississauga,ON-June 10-11, 2006
Repticon,Jacksonville,FL-June 10, 2006
River City Reptile Show,Peoria,IL-June 10, 2006
TARAS Spring Show and Sale,Ogden Legion, Alberta,-June 10-11, 2006
"R-A-B"-Sommer-Terraristikbörse,Mendrisio, Switzerland,-June 11, 2006
All Cleveland Reptile Show & Sale,Fairview Park,OH-June 11, 2006
St. Louis Reptile Show,St. Louis,MO-June 11, 2006
Terraria-Houten,Houten, Holland,-June 11, 2006
International Reptile Breeders Assn.,Pomona,CA-June 15-16, 2006
1st Cold Blooded Emporium,Northglenn,CO-June 17, 2006
Dixie Reptile Show,Birmingham,AL-June 17, 2006
Florida Reptile & Alternative Pet Show &,West Palm Beach,FL-June 17, 2006
Kalamazoo Reptile and Exotic Animal Show,Kalamazoo,MI-June 17, 2006
Oklahoma Reptile Expo,Broken Arrow,OK-June 17-18, 2006
Portland Metro Reptile Expo,Wilsonville,OR-June 17, 2006
Pittsburgh Reptile & Bird, Show & Sale,Cheswick,PA-June 18, 2006
Pittsburgh Reptile Show & Sale,Cheswick,PA-June 18, 2006
Reptile Swap,Streamwood,IL-June 18, 2006
Exotic Animal, Reptile, & Bird Swap/Sale,Valparaiso,IN-June 24, 2006
Texas Reptile Expo,San Antonio,TX-June 24-25, 2006
Midwest Reptile Shows,Indianapolis,IN-June 25, 2006
For more information on events go to
http://www.kingsnake.com/events.html
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Heat During the Cold Snap
Wes von Papineäu
President 2004/5, Ottawa Amphibian & Reptile Assn
During the ole 'Great Winter Storm of 98,' a lot of Quebec and Ontario lost power for about three days, and in some places for longer.
Unfortunately, most of our herps are warm, if not actually hot, weather friends, and unlike us, cannot bundle up in extra layers for warmth. They rely on external heat, warmth that during a power failure, may be hard to come by in the big city.
Your first priority is to preserve and best utilize the heat already in your home to care for your scaled kids. The hope at this time is that the loss of electricity is only for a couple of hours, maybe a day at most. For short periods, you don't have to buy any special equipment, but you should know where your herp 'first-aid' heating items are.
Your first option for temperate animals could be to pop them into pillow slips/canvas snake bags (depending on their size) and slip them into the water bed under the coverlet . the heat there is good for a day or two. You sleep on the floor.
Second. You have a days worth of hot water in your hot-water tank in the basement of your home or apartment complex. Fill hot water bottles or food jars (with good seals) with hot/warm water of the appropriate temperature. Wrap the bottles in a towel (not too thick or the heat won't get out), and tuck them into a small box along side your herp. You can pack the box with extra clothes to give appropriate padding and insulation. Change the bottles as necessary as hot water is available. (If you have gas/propane-heated water tanks, you'll be fine for days).
Third, and a bit more extreme. Tuck the kids into smaller, padded boxes, and set them next to the car heater as close as you're comfortable with. This option is more difficult to monitor temperature-wise and you'll have to keep a sharp eye out for 'hotspots' developing, but if you're desperate, it'll keep the kids warm for at least a while.
Last, a short-term solution for one or two smaller snakes is for you to wear a thick, preferably long sweater (or maybe even a jacket) that you can tuck into your pants or secure with a tight belt. Place your slithery one into a pillow slip/canvas bag, tuck in your sweater, and then drop the pillowslip down your front! Your herp will slither about for a while, but will settle down warm against your belly. Your only problem is to remember that they're there after a couple of hours. For the ladies, go for the 'very' pregnant look and play the sympathy card - let people feel your little one 'kick'! Then ask for sheets and more hot water!
If the worst happens and the outage goes on for any length of time, use your outdoor BBQ/camp stove/hibachi stove to heat water while you're cooking meals on the back deck ... or on your apartment patio . and use this water in your herp hot water bottles. If you have an indoor fireplace, you should think now of what metal pot you're going to sacrifice to heat water in .. it will probably end up sooty and charred for a while (Don't waste water trying to wash pots between heatings.)
The best bet as long-term heating insurance is to purchase a small propane heater ($60 at Canadian Tire) and a couple of those small camp stove propane tanks (two for $7). Set the heater in the smallest room possible so that you're not heating 'wasted space'; the bathroom might be best, and stack your kids in smaller boxes away from the heaters' radiant faceplate. There may be some 'fume' and fresh air circulation issues, so you'll have to check the warm room from time-to-time to ensure that fumes don't build up. A small room will warm up quickly, and if you keep the door closed, it will stay that way for a while after the propane heater is shut off.
To sum up. Get your herps into smaller, more easily heated/or heat-retentive containers, and keep those containers in the warmest room in the house. Remember, your priority is to heat your 'herp' during this emergency, not the herp's room or environment. Last, don't keep opening the containers to check on the kids . you're losing heat every time you do. Even if they 'mess', it's only for a (hopefully) short while . and it will be a warm 'mess'. For small collections 'you' can be the source of heat . not quite tropical, but at least liveable for a day or so. And besides, it could be a real bonding process between you and your snake!
I encourage you to get up right now and walk around your place and identify the box you'll need (it can be full of other stuff, you're just looking for options right now), the padding/insulation, possible hot water bottles and pots that will be needed and where you put that horrible thick purple sweater that Aunt Bethula knit you four years ago. You don't have to set anything aside right now, just know where everything is. It's important to know where things are now; you might not be home when the emergency hits and you'll have to talk someone else in the house through the 'save Snuffy the snake' process.
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Hormone Abnormalities as a Factor in Male Green Iguana Aggression
by Melissa Kaplan
Some ideas to consider, based on what we know about hormone production, regulation and dysregulation in humans and other animals
After responding yesterday to an e-mail list post about the breeding season-related aggressive behaviors of a particular 4 year old male iguana, I woke up this morning thinking about those male iguanas who are extremely aggressive during breeding season, and those who are very aggressive all year round, and what it is that makes them different from the far greater number of males who are sociable and agreeable outside of breeding season, and whose behaviors during their breeding season range from comical to annoying, rather than outright dangerous to others.
Being in captivity is part of the problem with some of these iguanas--being forced to live in an enclosure that is significantly smaller than their territory in the wild. Even if the enclosure is a 2000 square foot house in which the iguana free-roams, it is still smaller than a wild iguana's territory, especially since the captive one includes at least one human, probably more, and a parade of visitors and possibly even some other resident animals.
Some of you may have read the account of Bon's iguana, iZ, who became fiercely aggressive as a result, it was later found out, of pain caused by a tumor (see Tough Love, or Attigtude Adjustment). So, assuming routine veterinary exams have ruled out impactions and tumors and other illness, might there be a physiological or biochemical reason for some of the cases of extreme breeding aggression seen in some male iguanas?
Some of you through the years may have wandered through my Chronic Neuroimmune Diseases website and come across my article on Estrogen Dominance. The quick overview (see my Glucuronidation article for more complete information): the body produces an acid that binds with the body's used estrogen, keeping control of it as it is escorted out of the body. Thus, the body keeps producing estrogen, but also gets rid of the estrogen previously produced.
However, an enzyme may be created by, it is believed, one of the 500 or so cousins of E. coli that live quietly (and benignly or commensally) in our gut, that breaks this bond or otherwise prevents it from being formed. When that happens, the bound and should-have-been-bound estrogen is free to keep circulating through the body, wrecking havoc as it goes.
Could this same thing happen with testosterone? Is there something that is supposed to be binding the 'used' testosterone? If so, could something cause this bond to be broken, or kept from being made in the first place?
Another possibility: Could some part of the conversion cascade that results in testosterone and its metabolites be faulty, thus increasing total testosterone (higher up the conversion cascade) or free testosterone (that which circulates in the blood at any given time)?
In doing some general searching on the Web, using "binds testosterone" and, later, "excess testosterone", I found that, indeed, there are similar processes going on in males that can go wrong, just as they can in females. In fact, women will recognize many of the hormones, since they play roles in our own monthly cycling and cause problems as we deal with fertility problems and progress through perimenopause.
The following is from a Hormone.org booklet on low testosterone, but it simply and clearly describes how things work properly and why they might become dysfunctional:
Testosterone Production (page 4)
The body carefully controls the production of testosterone. Chemical signals from two locations - the pituitary gland at the base of the brain, and a part of the brain called the hypothalamus - tell the testes how much testosterone to produce.
The hypothalamus controls hormone production in the pituitary gland by means of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH). This hormone tells the pituitary gland to make follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH). LH signals the testes to produce testosterone. If the testes begin producing too much testosterone, this is sensed by the brain which sends signals to the pituitary to make less LH. This, in turn, slows the production of testosterone. If the testes begin producing too little testosterone, the brain senses this and sends signals to the pituitary gland telling it to make more LH, which stimulates the testes to make more testosterone.
The role of binding testosterone in males and females is played by a hormone cleverly called sex-binding hormone protein (SBHP). Needless to say, SBHP binds more testosterone in females than it does in males, once they reach puberty. Since both males and females produce testosterone and estrogens, it isn't surprising the SBHP production and function is a complicated one, resulting from the amounts of free estrogen and testosterone, which affect the body's production of SBHP--or lack of it.
A research paper, Sex Hormone Binding Globulin and the Assessment of Androgen Status, goes into this rather densely but might be useful in talking to your vet about getting your iguana's hormones tested.
Now, true, this paper is written more from the perspective of women's diagnosis and health issues arising from increased levels of testosterone, but the male is the flip side of the female (physiologically if not socioemotionally) and so, where there are dysfunctions and dysregulations that can cause a decrease in total and free testosterone in males and females, and increases in females, there are going to be things that cause testosterone increases in males.
(Here's another easier-to-read discussion of the free and bound testosterone, at Diagnose-me.com.)
Excess testosterone can cause irritability, even rage. The steroids abused by body builders and athletes are synthetic testosterone; regular long-term use leads both to the irritability and rage (as well as severe acne and impotence, which probably does little to ameliorate the irritability and rage.).
The impotence, by the way, is caused by the fact that excess testosterone is converted into estrogen, with the result that males become feminized, leading to weight gain and reproductive problems (which leads us back to Environmental Estrogens, for those who want to look at the long term effects of male feminization of a species and the sources of environmental--xeno--estrogens).
What I am wondering is this: Could there be an excess testosterone situation occurring in breeding season male iguanas, perhaps due to a pituitary, hypothalamus, or adrenal problem, or a problem with the liver detoxification pathway associated with SHBP production/function, that is not leading to feminization because breeding season--and the cyclical increase in testosterone--occurs for only a relatively short period of time each year?
Remember: in the wild, males are in season for only 28-30 days, not months, as they are in captivity. A wild male iguana may have this type of problem, but he lives in a much bigger area and is only dealing with testosterone overdose for a month, if that, out of the entire year. In captivity, where breeding season for males lasts much longer (and may be triggered twice in one year), this could be a significant problem for an iguana with a genetic or acquired dysfunction in their hormone production or regulatory system.
So, perhaps a talk with the vet about testing to check out the androgen/testosterone cascade, including free and total testosterone and SHBP, might start yielding clues. The same for checking out the pituitary, hypothalamus, adrenals, and liver structure and function.
The problem with liver function tests (LFTs) is that they really don't tell you much - just whether enzymes are elevated or not, or whether the liver is cirrhotic or nearing failure. They don't tell you anything about what detox pathways are impaired. There is such a test for humans, but it involves ingesting caffeine and aspirin before the 24 hour saliva and urine collection, so I'm thinking it won't be particularly usable with iguanas. But perhaps there are analogs that can be used to start gathering data needed to start making assessments and comparisons.
Another way avenue to use to compare and contrast 'normal' male green iguanas to those who are extremely aggressive during breeding season only, and those who are extremely aggressive all year round, would be to do MRIs (fMRIs would be even better but the challenging would be to figure out 'tasks' for iguanas to engage in while being scanned), PET, and SPECT scans to look at brain structures, activity and perfusion.
Other hormones worth reviewing are the neurotransmitters that can affect behavior, especially serotonin. Less widely known is that thyroid hormone imbalance can result in psychosis and rage in some individuals, as can infection by various parasites not normally tested for or for which there are no definitive (100% accurate) laboratory tests. Microbial organisms are increasingly being associated with schizophrenia, autism and other neurological or mental/behavioral disorders that were once thought to be "all in the head."
Copyright 2006 by Melissa Kaplan. Used with permission.
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Cold Blooded Chronicles is copyright 2006 by OnlineHobbyist.com, Inc., unless otherwise stated.
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