Science behind husbandry and care - finding studies and primary resources?

Colubrids Corn Snakes
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Hi fellow repitle people! I’m a new corn snake owner, and my ADHD has driven me way off the deep end learning about corn snakes and their care. In particular, I’m interested in care advice and where it comes from, and I’m struggling to find resources.

I know a lot of what’s in common care guides/advice come from a lot of trial and error from breeders, keepers, and passionate hobbyists. But I still like to get into the gritty details and understand they WHYs that led us to where we are today. If I’m caring for an animal, I want to give them the best care I can based on facts, not only because someone said “this works for X, so I guess I’ll do that.” It’s fine for general advice, but when you want to weigh different issues together to make a judgement call, it’s good to know the reasoning in more detail to make the best call for your own situation.

Beyond ReptiFiles, what are some good sarting places or reading material for learning more about my snake, particularly focusing on baby/juvenile care (and how it fdiffers from adults), and the reasoning behind the current advice on post-regurge care.

Let me be clear - I am NOT asking for post-regurge advice. It’s out there, I’ve seen it and I understand the general advice. I’m looking for how that advice came to be, actual biological explanations and resources. If I can follow up your claims with “according to who?” or “what is the source of that assumption?” than you’re not answering my question.

For example, many people say that we need to give snakes a full 2 weeks to recover their gut microbiota after a regurge. What most people fail to mention or realize is that there is a difference between a regurgitation and vomiting. Medically speaking, regurge comes from the stomach/higher in the digestive system.Vomiting comes from the lower digestive system, after the food has left the stomach and entered the intestines. My understanding is that when a snake regurges, that food hasn’t been digested yet, and therefore doesn’t lead to the animal expelling anything from their intestines. The microbiota hasn’t been impacted in this case, yet common advice treats a regurge as the same as vomiting, when in fact, they are functionally different issues, with different causes and different risks.

That’s the kind of depth I’m trying to find. If you have good resources, please let me know!

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Hello, fellow corn snake fan and science nerd. First, I’ll say that I love a curious mind. I am not a veterinarian nor a professional scientist. Some members of the community here are, and you’ll likely get more in-depth info from them. I’m just an old retired teacher, but I’ll see if I can address a couple of your points.

You’re right, there’s lots of info out there. The vast amount of it, much of which is either restatement or actual nonsense (i.e. ReptiFiles which you mention for corns is at least partial nonsense yet it’s often cited as the correct info) makes it harder.

Excellent.

This is not quite correct. Regurgitation in humans and other mammals refers to undigested food being expelled, passively or almost passively. This often refers to food in the esophagus or stomach soon after being swallowed. A baby “spitting up” when burping is an example. It can happen with older kids and adults, but usually it’s limited after the esophageal sphincter gets stronger. The key words of that definition are “undigested” and “passively.” Vomiting is forceful, involving strong, involuntary muscular contractions to expel food and digestive products from the stomach through the mouth. Vomiting of intestinal contents can occur, but this is an unusual and very serious sign. It often indicates intestinal blockage or paralysis.

In vet med, the term “vomiting” is not used. Regurgitation refers to the forceful ejection of food and digestive products from the mouth. Like those of all obligate carnivores, the snake’s intestines are short and much straighter than ours. Most absorption happens there, but the bulk of the breakdown of food happens in the stomach, which is proportionally larger than ours. Makes sense since they consume relatively huge meals. You can see an example here:

Incorrect. Meals stay in the stomach for days, and the microbiota of the stomach is definitely impacted. Again, vomiting is not normally a process which occurs from the intestines. There is also scientific data that snakes’ intestines undergo changes while the food is on the stomach. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1095643320302440

Digestion in ectotherms is always a race with decomposition. When a meal is too large, temps are too low, the snake is highly stressed, it has insufficient digestive health, parasites, whatever - decomp wins and regurgitation occurs. When it does, the slow motion ejection of partially rotted prey and the accompanying bacteria, along with digestive acids causes damage to the esophagus. The gut microbiota is already off kilter. It takes time after regurge for damage rises to heal and also to rebuild.

That’s just an initial snippet on the topic. Hope it helps. Kudos for wanting solid info!

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That’s a pretty interesting want on your behalf.

With the 2-week feeding pause after a regurge, I always heard it was to give time for the esophagus to heal because a snake’s stomach acid that comes up with a regurge is particularly damaging to the esophageal lining. I never heard it was for the bacterial fauna to repopulate. Which is it? If you could dig into the scientific sources that spawned this 2-week advice, we would know. I definitely see the value in what you are asking for. I absolutely HATE spreading myths and old-wives-tales. Alas, I don’t have any scientific sources to point you to.

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My understanding is that it’s both. Regurgitation is very damaging. Think about how sore your throat can get after throwing up. Now image that it took you as long to do that as it takes your snake to swallow. Damaging and painful.

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I’ve had a few years of vet tech/veterinary medicine classes and also a fellow ADHD affected, heres my thoughts based on that experience

Correct, in Veterinary Medicine regurgitation is the term used for any expelling of esophageal/stomach contents.

This is incorrect, or at the very least partially incorrect under certain circumstances.

Snakes lack a traditional sphincter that most other animals have that join the esophagus to the stomach, however they do posses a muscular pyloric sphincter that joins the stomach to the small intestines, thus once the contents of the stomach empty into the small intestines they normally cannot come back up into the stomach unless the snake has a condition that allows for reverse Peristalsis.

As @caryl mentioned, a snake’s meal also stays in the stomach significantly longer than other animals to allow for a more complete breakdown of stomach contents since snakes do not chew (which is the beginning stage of digestion for all other animals that do chew their food, breaking down bites into soft mush for easy digestion and introducing saliva that aids in breakdown).

Due to the fact that snakes have to digest whole prey (including bones and a little bit of fur) their stomach acid is particularly strong, and can cause burns to the esophagus, and a longer esophagus = more time spent expelling harmful stomach contents through the esophagus = more damage to the soft mucosal esophageal lining.

In the event of a regurgitation, all stomach contents are expelled, that includes the microbiota aiding in digestion. So the 2 week recovery time is to both allow for the gut bacteria to repopulate and to heal the acidic burns that occured in the esophagus.

Otherwise once the prey is adequately digested, it is emptied from the stomach into the small and large intestines where the rest of nutrient absorption occurs and then is expelled as waste.

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And to allow gut fauna to recover. That’s something else I heard. Probably from Kathy Love, whose suggestions are commands to me.

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I was the guy who answered some of this post on Reddit. I won’t repeat all that. But this place is definitely a much better forum for these kinds of questions than Reddit. :slight_smile:

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Or FB or Repti Files, etc, etc. etc. and so on……

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