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Wow. basement projects? Tupperware observations? You are way off base my little friend. I've spent more days in the field than you have spent breathing. Let's attempt to talk civilly about this without personal insults and making assumptions that we have no idea about as far as each other's experience and education. I can assure you that I can debate with your "herpetologist friends" and walk away not looking like an idiot. I might learn something. I KNOW they will. Also, I never negated the role of temperatures in digestion. I just said it's not groundbreaking information. I don't know of anyone who can tell a toad from a turtle that doesn't already know this. Baking a boa does not however mean it can eat more often. In even a very large cage, the higher the temp is on the hot side, the harder it is to maintain a cool side and reasonable ambient temperature. If you crank the heat on a boa too much, overheating will cause regurges and dehydration. If it's a young boa, it will die very quickly. Many years of fine tuning husbandry has paid off and the prescribed temperatures work for these animals. It's not exactly a new species in captivity. Many have tried to keep them hotter and colder than what's universally accepted as correct for captive husbandry and have failed. Your thoughts are not new or unique.
Mother nature does it's best? Since when? If anything, it's random and plays no favorites. Mother Nature cares for the prey as much as the predators. Outside of intervening factors, there's usually a balance at least for awhile. Nature offsets mortality through large litter/clutch sizes. Why? Because natural populations of reptiles everywhere they exist are typically doomed to short lives on average. Beating the odds of falling at random into a routine where shelter, water, food, thermo regulation can be utilized without crossing paths with disaster is nearly or often IS a miracle for these animals. MOST die young in the wild. It's up to the animal to survive. Mother Nature is no help whatsoever and in most cases, is one of the many causes of death. Floods, drought, forest fires, sudden climate changes, volcanic eruptions, constantly supplying disease, parasites, predators...On the upside, as I mentioned earlier, these things keep the animals in a constant state of struggling to stay alive. It keeps them lean and mean and those that can survive it all, tend to typically be the stronger animals. This basic struggle for survival comes with a great deal of physical exercise. Even a sloth in a rain forest, while moving very slow, IS MOVING. Captivity, even at it's finest is a relatively sedentary life. There is no possible way to keep any reptile in captivity and provide the daily exercise they endure in the wild. Exercise is AS important in the workings of metabolism as is temperature. Even if you put your boa on a treadmill for 12 hours a day, it's not going to make up for the quick bursts fleeing from predators or pursuing food . Climbing even if just through a thicket, burrowing (slipping under a little crushed coconut isn't the same thing), swimming upstream fighting rapids or choppy waves. constant or fairly regular at least adrenalin rushes speeding up the old ticker....It just can't happen in captivity. So we adjust. In order to have healthy animals that can easily survive to a full life expectancy, we find suitable feeding schedules and temperature/humidity gradients that allow for success IN CAPTIVITY. Temperatures are one of the things we really have to watch though because assumptions are dangerous to many and cold blooded animals especially do indeed have to have set ranges of temps that they can survive as well as find comfort in for any given circumstance ie: digestion. A lot of snakes are forgiving. A lot aren't. Studying the surface temperatures in a given location doesn't always allow for things like shade, deep cool burrows, lofty roosts where it's shaded, cool and breezy despite the heat down on the ground. It may well be 112 degrees in the very spot your boa is native to in Colombia SA as seen on the bank clock on any given day but it's not likely anywhere near that hot where he would be spending his days in the shade or near a babbling brook. Take a temp gun out in your yard and go check out how variable the temps are in various different locations. You mentioned micro habitat but you then negate by minimalizing it down to "hot temps".
Mother nature does her thing. We do ours. Mother nature challenges her animals every moment of every day to merely survive what she throws at them. She has the luxury of cheap replacement and not being in any way emotionally attached to what dies or why. Even extinction is all part of her scheme and as natural as survival of the fittest. Is this really a game you want to play with your pets? THERE IS NOTHING NATURAL ABOUT CAPTIVITY. You can not just pick and choose what parts of nature you want to copy. There are other factors. Temps for most boa constrictors 88ish on the hot side and high 70s on the cool side for daytime temps work well and have proven for many years ideal. If more choices can be provided, great! as long as they can find comfort without sacrificing security. Many snakes WILL choose security over comfort and will at times remain way too hot or too cold just because of security issues.
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