I had a corn snake that I purchased as a hatchling and kept for twenty-five years. Feeding schedule was every two to four weeks and no feeding for three to four months during winters
I have a fifteen-year-old ball python, a seventeen-year-old chondro, and a thirteen-year-old alterna. All of them are basically on the same cycle as above.
Now, none of these are/were breeding animals so that takes a degree of body stress off of them. But, with the exception of the ball, those ages are in the upper end for what we typically see in the hobby.
Outside of the ages though, I can observe the body tone of my own animals versus what is frequently seen across the hobby - the “double chin”, the “pinhead/cookie dough roll” body, the “back valley”…I have also seen necropsies of animals from other collections and performed necropsies on my own animals and seen a marked difference in the presence/amount/distribution of fatty tissues between the two
I grant that there is no scientific study behind it but when I look at my own collection and at the hobby writ large, there is sufficient anecdotal evidence for me to personally feel that overfeeding is an issue within the hobby.
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You are correct that there is a difference in metabolism between warm- and cold-blooded animals.
Analogy - think of it along the lines of an engine.
Your boxer metabolism is akin to a muscle car; the engine normally idles higher, say around 3k RPM, and when you eat it is like revving up to 4.5k RPM.
The snake metabolism is a Yugo, the engine normally idles around 500 RPM and when it eats you are having to rev up to 4.5k RPM
The end point may be the same, but the stress put on those engines to get them from their idle to that end point is rather different.
Add this second factor in. When you eat, your heart, lungs, and stomach stay pretty much the same size (yes, your stomach stretches a little but that is within a normal range). With snakes, their heart, lungs, and stomach undergo a massive growth spurt effectively doubling, and in some cases tripling, in size and cell density. The lung has to increase in size to provide more oxygen to the blood which has to be distributed by the heart that has to increase in size to provide higher volumes of blood to the stomach which has to increase in size to facilitate the act of digestion.
Sticking with the engine analogy. When you as a boxer eat, the V8 muscle car engine stays a V8 muscle car engine and simply revs. When the snake eats, the straight 4 Yugo engine has to be rebuilt on the fly into a V8 muscle car engine in the time it takes to get up to 4.5k RPM. Likewise, when you the boxer are done digesting, you just ease your foot back off the gas and the revving V8 muscle car engine returns to an idling V8 muscle car engine where as when the snake finishes digesting the revving V8 muscle car engine has to return to an idling straight 4 Yugo engine.
Again, the end point may be the same between the two - idle to revved to idle - but consider now how the stress of a full cycle for each of those engines is radically different.
Now, consider that returning to that idle speed allows each engine time to “repair” itself from the stress of being revved. Imagine if you start letting the snake engine move back down to the Yugo form but once you get down to 2k RPM you slammed it back into V8 mode at 4.5k RPM. And then you kept doing that. Over and over. Think about how doing that just constantly compounds the stress
Feeding smaller prey items can help help reduce that stress - less time running in V8 mode at 4.5k RPM means more time can be spent moving back toward Yugo mode and possibly allowing brief moments of idle time - but the effects will ultimately catch up in the end