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Hello and welcome to episode 67.
My intro animal today is a Scincopus Fasciatus.
It is a 'new' Skink species. They are from Niger, in West Africa.
From the southern Sahel.
This is the first year in which they are imported to the US and Europe.
This species was known, but it wasn't available on the market.
Now it is available and you can import it from West Africa.
Very nice and beautiful animals. Essentially they are vegetarians..
Or you can feed them with cat food. Cat food, salads, fruits, they eat almost everything you feed them.
By nature, they are as tame and well-behaved as you can see here.
They are really gorgeous. Normally I'm not a Skink fan, but I really love this species.
For that reason I chose it as my intro animal.
Unfortunately, these animals are import animals. There aren't any animals available in stores yet.
But now they are available and we can and have to breed them. In the future we will hopefully be independent of importing them.
Today's topic is ecdysis, the molting of a reptile's skin.
We want to examine and explain this phenomenon.
The whole process of molting is one of these fascinating aspects about reptiles.
Reptiles molt in regular intervals.
That is just fascinating. The fascination we herpetologists share.
However, this is what is mystical about reptiles!
It is kind of what people dream of. After you cast your skin, you are young again and everything is perfect.
Each and every reptile molts. Snakes, Saurians and Turtles. Let's begin and talk about snakes.
I'll go through it step by step.
Here I have an animal with the first signs, that it will molt soon.
If you look at the animal, its color is less intensive as it used to be.
From above, it looks a bit faint. Normally an albino has a very bright and vibrant color.
It is a bit hazy.
An other indicator are the eyes. You can see that they are starting to look milky and turn white.
And often an other good indicator is if you look at the belly. You can see a reddish shimmer on it.
That is a good indicator, your animal will molt soon.
And you can look at the tail area and the cloacae, you can also see a milky shimmer.
For an experienced herpetologist, these are indicators for an upcoming molt.
Beginners will probably not notice this or give it much consideration.
They will take that animal and continue to care for it in the way he always does.
We won't think much about why the animal looks like this.
Here we have phase 2 of the molt.
You can see the signs perfectly on this Champagne.
All in all, everything is dull, no real color anymore.
The colors are tone in tone. This animal is definitely molting!
... then just send me a mail or ask for advice in a forum. 'What's wrong with my snake? The eyes are totally blue!'
This is the typical phase during molting. Of herpetologists know this.
In this case, you would leave the animal in peace.
It will shed its skin soon.
This animal is in phase 3.
This phase is a bit tricky, because you wouldn't notice this straight away.
The eyes are clear again.
The beginner will think: 'My snake shed its skin, but where is the skin?
The skin is still on the animal.
After this phase, after these milky eyes, about 1-2 days until the animal will really shed its skin, the eyes are clear again.
The snakes color is also almost normal again.
In this case, I assume that this animal will molt during the night.
Let me prove my assumption. If scrap the skin, then I can already see pieces of the skin that can be rubbed of.
You can notice this about one day or shortly before they molt.
You can rub of pieces of the skin.
And the next day, or the morning afterwards, this is what it looks like if everything works out.
Inside your terrarium you often can find such a skin knawel.
Let me try to pull this apart a bit.
Often there can be some scat or urine inside - or it is inside of your terrarium.
In general snakes hold their scat and urine until they have successfully shed their skin.
And afterwards these animals purge their bowls, at least sometimes.
Residues can be found in the old skin.
This is the ideal case; This is how it should look like inside your terrarium the next day.
This is one long flexible tube. If I were to untangle it, we could see the whole skin in one piece.
I needed an animal for demonstration and found this one with a neatly shed skin by chance.
Of course your snake will keep the same skin color afterwards that it used to have!
I didn't mean to suggest that they would shed their markings as well!
This snake is and was white, it didn't change its color!
Of course, this is well-known to herpetologists.
That everything works that well and seamlessly and looks that great is because ...
You can compare this skin to an inverted stocking. The inside is outside and the other way around.
If I were to continue, you could see even more. This is where the tail was and this is where the head was.
That is the complete skin as one piece.
This will happen under following conditions: 1. Your animal is healthy! We assume you do.
2. You have perfect climatical conditions in your terrarium. Especially humidity is a key factor when it comes to molting.
The parameters have to bee within the limits.
Really, check if your humidity is high enough during these phases of molting.
Of course, try to get it as close as you can, inside your terrarium.
During this phase it is even more important that you provide your snake with a moist hiding place.
A hiding place made out of moss. Please don't have a hiding place that is soaked, it should only be moist!
Inside the hiding spot the humidity should be even higher, because you put in a damp moss.
Then everything should work out perfect.
If the animals are kept in an environment that is too dry, or if the animal doesn't have a suitable or too dry hiding place ...
Then the shedding will not go as smoothly as here, the snake's old skin will be shred.
If everything didn't work out perfectly, then you can see skin remains on the animal.
In this case you can see it on the head. That isn't good at all and rather counterproductive.
There can also be remainders everywhere on the body.
In an extreme case, the whole animal would still be stuck in its old skin.
Unfortunately and luckily, I don't have such an animal here to show you.
However, you can use your imagination. It would look just like the head here, with the old and dry skin.
In this case, you have to intervene. Even if you are blind you should notice this condition.
If there is that much skin sticking to it, you can't say thins like: 'Well, my animal is shedding its skin for a week now".
This animal tried to, but wasn't completely successful at molting.
In this case, you have to help.
You have to try to peal and rub of that skin yourself.
If an animal looks the way, we just described, with old skin still on it ...
... as said before, you have to remove them.
You shouldn't try this on a very dry skin.
Bath the animal in such a bowl; this one could be a bit larger.
Or you can use these paper towels
Dip them into lukewarm water and then place the paper towels everywhere on the animal.
Leave those towels on the animal for about 5 minutes.
In general, the snakes should keep still and not move.
Let me show you the whole procedure.
First, I soak this paper towel.
Then I place it on the animal; so much for 'the animal will keep still'.
Afterwards I can begin to carefully remove the old skin.
Some information about the water and the conditions. Of course the water is not really warm, it is slightly lukewarm.
Don't use ice-cold water. You wouldn't do this in a room with 18°C; Or with all the windows open and a draft.
Your room should have an adequate temperature. The water should be lukewarm.
And please do make sure, that your snake will not catch a cold.
Especially when you moisten the snake or when you bath it.
Don't bath the snake for half an hour and in the mean time the water is ice cold.
As I said, you gain no advantage when you remove the old skin but trade that for pneumonia.
... we softened or soaked the old skin.
Now we have to carefully remove and peel of this skin.
Always start with the head and work your way towards the tail.
We don't work against the grain, only work in the direction of the grain!
You should be two people.
You start at the front and move towards the back. You can remove the skin rather easy, just like this.
The really important part are the eyes.
I really have to make sure that the skin about the eye can be easily removed.
Just as you can see!
You can see that the eye sheds as well. It is the so-called glasses.
It is crucial that you remove it!
If you do a sloppy job and remains there, bacteria find this a great place to live and your snake could have an infection.
This can damage or even destroy your snake's eye!
During the molt, the eyes are the most important organ to pay attention to.
Make sure that all skin is removed.
In our case, the snake only had old skin on its head.
When an animal has almost not shed its skin and has numerous and large areas with the old skin ...
... then this normally starts at the animals nose, therefore you have to begin at the nose of the animal.
Start at the upper jaw, at the upper lip plate.
This is where the skin begins and you have to peel it away.
Now we have the worst case scenario.
I was a bit clumsy and peeled of the skin in an awkward way.
The glasses still is on the eyes, it is a bit of a contact lens.
I can try it myself or I have to go visit the vet.
With enough experience, you can do this job yourself. That way you won't additionally stress the animal by driving it around.
There are some tricks. You can carefully put some scotch on it and then carefully try to peel it of.
You could also use tweezers. However, I personally don't really like this method.
With all that metal, that close to the eye, it is dangerous, you can easily hurt the animal even more.
I normally have good and long fingernails.
I always try to use my fingernails and carefully peel of that skin.
I have to carefully try to get my fingernail under the contact lens.
You could say that I am carefully scratching away the skin, always in the same direction.
I can even see where to beginning is.
I've almost got it.
Here we go, I hope you can see it.
You can see that I am holding these glasses, this contact lens in my hand. The lens that was on top of the eye
We have to remove it. Don't leave it there and hope that it will go away.
You have no option; you have to remove it.
The most common question: How oven does a reptile molt?
It depends on age, rate of growth and what its feeding habits are.
A freshly hatched baby or pup ...
... such as a young Ball Python, Corn Snake or pup molts every four to five weeks.
The larger an animal becomes, such as this huge Reticulated Python, will only shed every three to four months.
Even bigger and older animals, they would molt every six to eight months.
As said before, this always depends on how much they eat.
If I feed an animal often, then it will molt more often, because it grows quicker.
Growth and molting are related, it is quite clear that the quicker an animal grows, the more it has to molt.
That's how it corresponds with the molting.
In general, my advice is to not concern yourself to much with the intervals.
You will notice when the time is right.
Of course, you can write it down. You can however not influence it.
This leads us to the next question. Is it alright to feed your animal during its molt?
In general my advice is, when you can clearly see the signs; the eyes are totally hazy...
... and you know your snake is in ecdysis. Then I wouldn't feed it and leave it alone.
If you are unsure, then offer your animal some food.
Depending on the circumstances it may not feed at all. Then it won't do any harm.
If it is hungry, then it will eat, that is of no harm.
It's a widespread fairy tale that you aren't allowed to feed during ecdysis. Something could happen
The gullet molts too, therefore you are under no circumstances allowed to feed your animal.
For me this is a fairy tale. During my 25 years as a professional herpetologist, I never had an animal that was harmed because it was fed during ecdysis.
We also have to talk about diseases that are caused by the molt.
There is a disease that one to three of my snakes have every year; This is the case with this snake.
We have a pup that apparently is stuck in its skin.
It can't shed its skin on its own. In this case, it is a twin.
It is stuck in the molt. However, it is so thin and tiny, that we can't really help him.
We always try to keep the animal moist and we try to bath it.
Still, they aren't able to get out.
We can't remove the skin because the animal is too small.
This a one of the rare cases where I don't have any good advice. Maybe one of our viewers has experience with this.
I wanted to talk about this phenomenon, without being able to give you good advice.
This was one thing I wanted to talk about. The other thing is about metabolic disorders.
At least this is *** language.
You can often see this with Red Rainbow Boas, but I've seen it with other animals too.
Sometimes they have one molt cycle after an other.
With the Red Rainbow Boas, this is often due to the climatical conditions.
If the air isn't humid enough or you heat from below, maybe even bacteria play a role ...
... they cultivate and the animal tries to react and get rid of them by shedding its skin.
They shed their skin and you can already see the next layer underneath it.
This falls under the topic metabolic disorder.
The cause can be an excess of vitamin A.
This can cause such a molt stimulus with snakes, lizards and turtles, with all animals.
You have to pay attention; do not feed to many vitamins. Especially if you supplement vitamin A in your chow.
But again, it can also be the cause of inappropriate keeping of your snake or a Red Rainbow Boa.
All this time we've been only talking about snakes.
But of course, also turtles molt.
Every reptile does.
A turtle will not molt on its shell, because that remains and is what the shell is composed of.
On the legs, head and everything that is covered with skin and isn't covered by the shell, these areas molt.
Of course, they don't shed their skin in one piece, as a snake would.
That a whole turtle sock dissolve.
There are rather a lot of scrapes that you would see.
They aren't like snakes and don't eat anything during that time.
Often this phase isn't even recognized.
But I wanted to show you that they shed their skin, just as any other reptile.
Most lizards don't molt their skin in one piece, as a snake would do.
With a Green Basilik Leopardgecko as I have here, it is the case that ...
It starts at the head and goes on towards the tail.
If you have a look at this area, you can clearly see that it is shedding its skin.
The head is already completed.
By the time he is finished and at the tail, everything begins at the head again.
This whole process is always happening.
I can demonstrate this. Just look at its tail. Here is some old skin, that you can rub off.
Indeed this skin falls of by itself. I've never experienced or seen that you have to help a lizard during its ecdysis.
They manage the job on their own.
If you see some skin shreds on your animal, this isn't a cause for concern. It is rather normal.
General exceptions are the Leopard Geckos.
These animals also shed their skin in one piece.
This one will molt during the night. You can see on its side that ...
The skin is coming off at some of these spots.
During the night it will shed its skin completely and in one piece.
tomorrow it will look like new.
But a couple of animals molt in one piece, just like the snakes.
I just said that you do not have to do much with Saurians.
That is only one part of the story. On a Chameleon you can clearly see the following:
Here you can see what could happen, if something goes wrong.
One reason is that the air was too moist.
Some people spray water like crazy. Afterwards the skin is wet and sticks.
This is especially the case with Veiled chameleons.
The skin doesn't want to peal off. The skin composes sort of a sock.
For example around a leg or the tail.
The skin dries out and contracts.
As a result, it strangulates the affected body parts and has a negative influence on blood circulation.
This can lead to and it can be the case, especially with the toes ...
... with very young Bearded Dragons and Bearded Dragons in general ...
... you often have this phenomenon at the toes.
The skin doesn't come of; It dries out and contracts;
It strangulates the blood circulation in the affected member - which then can die off.
The cause is the insufficient blood supply in the members.
This is the reason why you have to pay attention with these Saurians.
When you see these shreds of skin hanging off. In this case everything would be fine, because the skin is new.
Nevertheless, old skin cannot be left there to dry out.
As I said, this is important to keep an eye on this with Bearded Dragons and Tejus.
I have see this on these animals; Toes wouldn't shed the right way; And as a result they would die off.
Often people notice that they lost a toe. They often think the reason is because they had a fight and bite each other.
No, they didn't have a fight. The old skin was the reason this happened.
Our name is Reptil.TV, but often we also want show you other animals that can be kept in a terrarium.
In this case arachnids.
These are fascinating and great animals.
When they shed their skin, you often think that the next day, you have got two animals in your terrarium.
Your animal and the skin of the animal, that has almost looks the same, just as your animal.
Of course, the colors are a bit different.
The next day, it looks like as if you have got two animals.
They shed their skin in one piece - afterwards this looks very fascinating.
Something small, but important about arachnids.
You should really pay attention, that during the molt and shortly thereafter (2-3 days) ...
Ultimately, they can't defend themselves.
Especially with these animals, it is important, that you do not feed them and that there are no other animals inside the terrarium.
I truly believe, no one can accuse us of turning Reptil.TV into a commercial.
Today I want to make an exception and present you some products.
I really find these products fantastic, that is the reason.
We have totally revised our web shop. Visit us at www.MS-Reptilien.de
We have this attire for you. Jewelry for herpetologists.
... chips for your shopping cart, tags with Spiders and Tarantulas ...
... and lots of other great products.
I can proudly say that these items are absolutely beautiful.
These are not items where you would say: 'Well at least they have got a reptile on it.'
They are beautiful and aesthetic.
This is the reason we added them to our range of goods.
This is also, why I wanted to briefly talk about them. If you enjoy this kind product, you can order these items through our web shop.
Apart from that - remain faithful!
I'd say, if this where a human, it would be called HJG.
Today's topic is reptile ecdysis.
And now, let's talk about ... that was a bad transition.
... it looks like it molted ... the colors are strong and the yellow is strong again ...
The ... eyes ... well now he is taking a *** ... the eyes are again ...
Well our support actor had to take a pee too.
... it is turned inside out, just like hand gloves ...
Camera: Well we put it in the outtakes. Stefan: Now it is part of the outtakes.
Camera: A moment [coughs'] And please
Turn on the camera, I think she could bite any moment now, turn on the camera.
That's it!