The third eye - is your pet reptile on a higher plane that you?

The "third eye"on a lizard - Wikipedia

The "third eye" was the seat of the soul, according to Rene Descartes, the French philosopher whose reductionist opinion of animals encouraged vivisection and other cruel animal experiments.
He couldn't have been more wrong. The third eye in reptiles is a functional adaptation which may allow them to "see" predators, like birds of prey, approaching from above. Its ability to function varies from species to species. In some it even has a lens and retina. In most reptiles the parietal eye doesn't have these but may be able "see" light and shade differences. There's a good description here.
The reptile parietal eye, connected to the pineal gland which is similar to the pineal gland deeper in the brain of mammals, responds to light and releases the hormone, melatonin, which regulates circadian rhythms like the sleep wake cycle. It influences the secretion of sex hormones too. And strangely it is the only bit of the middle brain that isn't paired. It's also got a good blood supply from a nearby artery.
In modern new age mysticism the third eye leads to  higher inner consciousness. With your third eye you see or experience stuff that ordinary non-enlightened humans cannot. Could your pet snake or lizard be on a higher plane that you are?

My Reptile Relationships survey is closing at the end of the month.

The third eye - not so much the seat of the soul as a way to regulate circadian rhythms.

The "third eye"on a lizard - Wikipedia

The "third eye" was the seat of the soul, according to Rene Descartes, the French philosopher whose reductionist opinion of animals encouraged vivisection and other cruel animal experiments.
He couldn't have been more wrong. The third eye in reptiles is a functional adaptation which may allow them to "see" predators, like birds of prey, approaching from above. Its ability to function varies from species to species. In some it even has a lens and retina. In most reptiles the parietal eye doesn't have these but may be able "see" light and shade differences. There's a good description here.
The reptile parietal eye, connected to the pineal gland which is similar to the pineal gland deeper in the brain of mammals, responds to light and releases the hormone, melatonin, which regulates circadian rhythms like the sleep wake cycle. It influences the secretion of sex hormones too. And strangely it is the only bit of the middle brain that isn't paired. It's also got a good blood supply from a nearby artery.
In modern new age mysticism the third eye leads to  higher inner consciousness. With your third eye you see or experience stuff that ordinary non-enlightened humans cannot. Could your pet snake or lizard be on a higher plane that you are?

My Reptile Relationships survey is closing at the end of the month.

Is my pet snake too fat? Or too thin?

Because we humans eat every day, it's difficult for us to get our head round the fact that reptiles don't need to. They need less food than we do because they don't have to heat up their bodies - the sun does that for them.
So many pet snakes end up too fat. Sometimes this is because their owners continue feeding them the same amount of food throughout their life. When they are young and growing, they need more than when they get to middle age - just like humans!! So if you feed your mature snake as often as you did when it was young, the result will be a portly animal.
With corn snakes, the fat is likely to accumulate just above the tail - look at the photo on the right and you will see the tail is growing out of a kind of bulge. That's usually a fat snake. If however it is an animal you have just bought, or if that lump occurs suddenly, then you need to take your snake to a vet to make sure it isn't some kind of illness.

The other mistake is not to feed your snake enough. That often occurs because if a reptile is kept at the wrong temperature without enough heat, their whole metabolism slows down. They lose their appetite and just go off their food. Slowly, their colours fade, their spine or ribs start showing and they become weak with starvation. Many of them will be dying before they get to a vet.
So how often should you feed your snake? How much? The detailed answers to this question depend on the snake's species. Get a good online care sheet from Evolution Reptiles here or from the RSPCA. Don't just rely on friends or forums  because the quality of advice will vary.
Finally, how do you decide if your snake is fat or thin or just right. Take a look at the very rough sketch below. It shows a cross section of a snake. The triangular shape on the left is a snake that is too thin - you may be able to see an outline of the spine at the top or even its ribs. The snake in the middle is the right size, a sort of dome-like shape with a flat bottom which is where its muscles pull it along the ground. The snake on the right is round all over - and too fat.

Are reptiles intelligent? Can they learn? Amazing Reptile Fact 2.

Dr Anna Wilkinson with a bearded dragon. A still from Ingenious Animals
Available on BBC IPlayer till Sept 28 2016.

About 20 years ago I asked a so-called reptile expert whether snakes could think? "No," he replied. "They have a primitive brain."
"How do they find their way about?" I asked him.
"Instinct. Pure instinct." he replied.
Reptiles have a reputation for being stupid animals - " a lower form of life," more "primitive" than mammals, just a bundle of instincts, without feelings, unable to learn.
Wrong.
This slur on reptile intelligence came about for several reasons. One was the rather odd idea we have of the role of intelligence in evolution - a kind of tree of life with clever man right at the top, and all the other animals below, getting stupider the lower they appear. Like an intelligence class system - man as master of the world, animals as peasants or serfs. It's a self-important human idea. Even a mollusc, the octopus, can be pretty bright and may even be able to use tools, something we used to think only humans did. And although reptiles preceded mammals, they have been evolving since then. So even if they started off dumb in the days of the dinosaur (and we have no reason to suppose this) they have been evolving since then.
Work at Lincoln University, under the direction of Dr Anna Wilkinson, has shown that tortoises  can navigate their way through mazes. They can even follow the gaze of a fellow tortoise to find out where it is looking. Lizards can learn whether a food reward is on the left or the right. Tortoises can recognise the difference between a picture of food or the picture of a nonfood object.
Even more extraordinary is that a bearded dragon can learn from watching another bearded dragon tackle a problem. From a video, no less. This was demonstrated in a BBC programme, Ingenious Animals, in which one of Dr Wilkinson's lizards watched a video of another lizard pushing aside a glass door to get at some meal worms. Before he saw the video, he spent a long time trying to learn how to do this. Once he had seen the video, he got the idea far more quickly.
So.... reptiles aren't stupid.

Click here to watch the bearded dragon experiment on BBC until September 28 2016. The bearded dragon part is about two thirds of the way through.

Wilkinson, A.  & Huber, L., (2012), Cold-Blooded Cognition: Reptilian Cognitive Abilities,’ in eds Vonk, J. & Shackleford, T. K. The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Evolutionary Psychology, Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press, 129-143.

How to kill your dragon - slowly and painfully.

This is a very sick bearded dragon,  brought into Evolution Reptiles in Kidlington.  It was probably in pain every single time it moved. It was desperately thin and its skin was a dull grey colour. It barely moved when handled. Bought off a Facebook page and it had been kept for three years without heating or UV light.
'It was very underweight," says Pete Milligan the owner Evolution Reptiles. "The spine was protuding and if you touched it it felt sharp. Each rib could be clearly felt. It was also lifeless when picked up."
He advised the owners to take it to a vet, sold a UV light to them, and discussed the lizard's welfare. Buying a lizard online (like buying a cat or a dog) is always dicey. They may come cheaper but the remedial vets bills will probably end up making these pets more expensive.
Other signs that the lizard was ill - its tail was flat not rounded: it had swollen joins on its feet: its elbows looked as if there were two elbows. Because it hadn't died quickly from lack of heat and UV light, its owner probably thought that it was OK to keep it that way. But the poor animal had survived in pain all that time.
"This all completely avoidable," says Pete. "People are still mistakenly thinking that reptiles don't need UV light. There are vivariums still being sold in which you cannot install UV lighting. And these are often sold with printed labels that give the wrong advice. It's time manufacturers got up to speed."

A healthy beardie with bright colours thanks to UV light

"The worst set up I see is tortoises that are kept without UV light. They are given Vitamin D supplement and people think this is good enough, but it is no substitute for ultra violet light."
Do my survey here:

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/FGJZKLT

Amazing reptile fact 1. Reptiles are cold blooded. Or are they?

Wikipedia

So reptiles are cold blooded. But not always. The Tegu lizard, Salvator merianae, from Argentina warms itself in the sun during spring and summer. At night they retreat to their burrows. In winer (April to September) they hibernate. At the end of hibernation in September the males emerge from their burrows ready to mate.
Their testosterone is high. The muscle in their face, which allows them to bite, swells ready for a fight.  Meanwhile the females are in the borrows, gathering nesting material and laying eggs. She guards them too - a kind of maternal care you see in birds and mammals.
This time of year, the tegus can heat themselves up and keep hotter longer, than would be expected just from basking. Birds and mammals do this all the time, so they don't need to bask in the heat. They make their own warmth.
So why is a reptile, cold-blooded, doing this?  Does this show evolution at work? Is this what was happening when the first mammals or birds emerged from the reptiles?

Read more at Tattersall et al., Seasonal reproductive endothermy in tegu lizards, Science Advances, 2016, 2. 1-7. Found at http://advances.sciencemag.orghttp://advances.sciencemag.org

How to choose a good reptile shop.

Pete of Kidlington's Evolution Reptiles. He runs a good shop.

1. Quick look round the premises to see if they are clean, well ordered with good reptile cages, not just a few old aquariums,  good selection of UV lights, free care leaflets (online or in the shop), hides, water bowls of the right type, etc. 
2. Specialist shops are usually better than general pet shops. Don't buy animals online. You don't know if they are healthy. Go and take a look first.
3. Do the reptiles in the shop have enough space, well ordered cages, UV lighting, basking spots, and places for snakes to hide. Or are they just kept in tiny plastic pots?
4. Is there are good amount of water. Enough for snakes to have their whole body submerged? Shallow but enough for tortoises to walk in so they can drink?
5. Are the staff willing to answer questions without blahblah- ing. Will they help you if you come in with a problem?
6. Do they sell books about the species you are buying.
7. Do they give a straight answer - ie. tell a first time buyer what reptile will be easy to keep? Or just sell them anything that the ten-year-old fancies?

Do my survey at https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/FGJZKLT