Science Fair Exhibit

[ganger72@comcast.net]

My 12 year old daughter caught her first garter snake when she was 3 years old and has loved them ever since. Next year she would like to do a presentation at her school science fair involving garter snakes.
My question is where can I get six to eight garter snakes from the same litter and can they be identified according to sex?
We will want to expose the snakes to variables of sunlight, music and foods to see the effect on their growth.
Are there any other factors that could be measured?
The snakes will not be hurt as she holds each one as if it were a kitten. They will not be subjected to anything that might harm them.
Are there any other suggestions that you could make for an award winning experiment that we could do at home?
Thank you in advance for your reply
Gerry

[Cazador]

Hi Gerry,
Hopefully, you'll find somebody on this website who can supply the snakes that you need, but most people either have their snakes in hibernation/brumation right now (preparing for breeding) or are just starting to bring them out. Maybe you'll be able to buy a gravid female. This would be a much more relaible way to get a bunch of related young, and you would be able to control their diet from "day one."

Remember that in order to have meaningful scientific results, you need replicates... the more the better. You'll need multiple controls on one diet and multiple "treated" snakes on another diet. If you want to do the music experiment, you'll also need multiple controls and multiple "treated" snakes. The best experiments are simple, yet reliable (i.e. few variables examined, yet large enough sample sizes to be meaningful.)

If you can't find what you're looking for here, you might try some of the other snake sites with classified add sections. We posted a thread with several listed here (http://www.thamnophis.com/forum/sale-trade-adoption-wanted/272-post-breeders.html), but this is the slow time of year everywhere. This might be a good time to tell a breeder what you're looking for, though.

Also, divide your experimental groups up randomly. Don't put all of the large snakes, females, most active snakes, etc. into the same group, or it'll bias your results. You might consider giving one group a fish-only diet and another group a diet of only pinkie mice/parts and seeing which group grows faster (if either) ;). There's a bit of scientific literature already available to reference. Hope you get a lot of good feedback, and best of luck to you and your daughter,

Rick

[ssssnakeluvr]

not sure music will have any effect on them at all...snakes are deaf, can feel vibrations on the ground....

[ganger72@comcast.net]

In the past, we've been able to keep garter snakes alive with crickets for food. No one has mentioned crickets. Why? The snakes and the crickets live in the snake cage and the snakes enjoy the feeling that they are hunting for their live food. We've also been able to keep frogs and toads alive with these same crickets which we buy from PetSmart. They are a ready source of live food, year-round.
This science project is not due until next December but we are trying to investigate the feasibility of this experiment now in case she has to look in another direction for a project.

[ssssnakeluvr]

wel, if you had frogs in there,they probably ate the crickets....garters don't eat insects, they are unable to digest the exoskeletons of insects....snakes can go long periods without food (depending on age and size) with no ill effects. How soon will you be needing the babies?? Scott Felzer usually has large numbers of babies. Here's a link to his site....
Scott Felzer's Garter Snakes, specializing in aberrant garters (http://www.albinogartersnake.com/home.html) Check with him!!!!

[ganger72@comcast.net]

There were no frogs in the cage as I did not want the snakes to eat them. I watched the snakes eat the crickets!
Thanks for the info on Scott Felzer.

[KITKAT]

Crickets will shorten the lives of your garters. I suggest you get rosey reds, a garter-edible fish that is also available at Petsmart and almost always available. In addition, Petsmart carries nightcrawlers. I find them more expensive than my local bait shop (where I buy minnows and nightcrawlers), but they will give your snakes better nutrition.

For a science project, you might take two snakes of approximately the same weight, age, and sex, and weigh them weekly, with one on the diet I have described, and one on the cricket diet.

If you have one of your students do that project, we would all love to hear the results!

(My father taught Science for 30 years on the secondary level.);)

[ganger72@comcast.net]

Thanks for the reply. I would like to be sure that all snakes are the same sex to keep the results pure. I may get as many as 8 and have several different experiments with food and light.

[Cazador]

Hi Gerry,
You might get a bit of a sticker shock when you go to purchase 8 garter snakes. You'll probably end up paying $15-20 each for the most common types, but I've seen them for as little as $5 (it's rare, though). Okay... once in a while you see them offered for free but that's even less common.

People can eat crickets, too, but neither people nor garter snakes can digest their exoskeleton, which is made of chitin. The snakes will get whatever nutrition they can out of whatever they can digest within the cricket, but as you know, they can't chew their food to break the chitin apart and take full advantage of the cricket's nutrients. Kitkat offered a very good experimental idea, which would reinforce this concept for you. I suspect, however, that you'd have to change the diet of the experimental group that's eating crickets at some point because of failure to thrive.

The only thing I'd modify about this design is that you'll need more than one snake per diet because individual snakes (like individual everything) grow at different rates. Some individuals will simply eat more food than others and grow faster... even if they're on the same diet. Others may eat the exact same amount as its neighbor, but it will spend a different amount of time under the heat lamp (or spend more energy running around... exercising). Look at all the men around you. They're not all the same size or shape. You'll have to describe each experimental group in terms of means, or averages. If you can talk about standard deviations, that's even better.

Rick

[ganger72@comcast.net]

My daughter and I are planning on two or three on the same diet and use an average for growth rate. My problem is where to keep them. I have a nice area outside but it is subject to climate and the garage, while more protected, does not give a true reading of growth as it is dark most of the day.
I would like natural light and have the only variable their diet. The other option is to feed them all the same diet and change their environment. It's just another thought.
Thanks for the reply on the crickets. When we had a large toad and several snakes, I had to seperate the toad from the snakes as it would eat all the crickets at one time. Like a bottomless pit.
The snakes did very well for several weeks on the crickets and what you say about not being able to digest them surprises me as the snakes grew and thrived and their "poop" seemed fine.

[Cazador]

Yep. I'm sure that the inability to digest chitin is surprising for a lot of people. It would be like eating a corn cob for you and I. You'd get a bit of energy out of it, but you're going to pass a lot of undigested material (fiber). To be fair, snakes can go for a month without eating anything without blinking. This is litterally true because they have no eyelids (okay... terrible joke, I know). Anyway, they'll live for a month without eating anything and still show a bit of growth because they're using their limited energy reserves, and their metabolism slows. If, however, you compare their growth rate to the growth rate of snakes on a more nutritious diet (fish or rodents), you'll find quite a difference. We're not even beginning to discuss the lack of calcium, vitamins, minerals, and other essential fatty acids/nutrients that a diet of pure crickets would cause.

I also think that you'll be able to control (and describe) their living conditions if you house them in your garage, using lights on a timer and supplemental heating. It's a lot easier to say, for example, that they experienced daily conditions of 14 hours of light and 10 hours of darkness and day:night temperature variations between 85 & 75F than it would be to try and describe cloudy, sunny, rainy, windy, hot, cold, etc. conditions experienced outdoors. May I suggest that a sample size of two snakes per group is insufficient? If you have a huge range between two individuals, you won't be able to say if one of the individuals represents the norm or the exception. Hope this helps you develop a really awesome science fair experiment.
Rick

[KITKAT]

It's actually more important to realize that crickets are high in phosphorus, too. Most animals, reptiles included, need a balance between calcium and Phosphorus, and in crickets, this balance is way off.

That is why we dust the crickets with calcium dust when we feed them, and why we gut load them. In my keeping of Bearded Dragons, I find it useful to feed the dragons veggies from the cabbage family, as those veggies are high in calcium as well.