News From The Mews

Just like we provide daily enrichment for our raptors at the Museum, the snakes get enrichment, too! Digger the Western Hognose Snake searches for her mouse partially hidden in a muffin tin. To make her search more challenging, mouse scent was placed in several of the muffin cups! Will she find her mouse?

On Sunday, I found Emory in this odd position with part of her body draped over her rock hide. I had a theory as to why. The clues were as follows: The rat snake ate a tasty mouse the day before. A snake's stomach is about one-third of the way down their body. This rock was the warmest place in her habitat, directly under the heat lamp.  If her full stomach was placed in the warmest spot, she must have been working on digestion! There's even a technical term for this behavior: post-prandial thermophilic response .  For the word nerds out there... Post = after Prandial = relating to a meal Thermo = heat Philic = loving Post-prandial thermophilic response = after-meal heat-loving! Basically, snakes seek out a warm spot after eating to help with digestion. Reptiles can't produce their own body heat so they rely on the environment to get the perfect temperature. The warmer they are, the faster their meal is processed. Higher temperatures may also mean more efficient uptake of n

Fifteen-hundred doesn't sound like a big number when looking at mileage on a vehicle or the balance in a retirement account. But in other cases, 1,500 sounds like a lot. That's the number of recorded weights we reached recently for Aldo the American Kestrel. That means he has climbed on a scale 1,500 times while we diligently wait for him to stand still and read the digital display. That's a lot!

During Cable's Fall Fest last Saturday, I had to watch Otto's body language carefully to see how he was feeling. Could I ask him to go in his crate during our training session? Or was he too worried about all of the activity in town? He was definitely concerned about Cable's autumnal festivities. But he was also interested in food. So we kept our training session simple. He got a treat when he turned his attention back to me. Watch the video to see how his body language changes and how I assess his posture and feather positions to determine how he's feeling.