Whenever individuals wonder about getting an iguana, various questions come to light. More often than not, one of these questions is: Where can I keep it? Many people then search to find out the components of a proper cage for an iguana. If you are looking for the best iguana cage then here is a bit of guidance for you:

1) The size of iguanas is the 1st thing you need to know about so that you know how large your iguana cage has to be. Some people have the wrong idea that the terrarium size will limit the size that the lizard can grow. This is simply not true. Under good conditions an iguana can often grow up to 6 feet! This means that you will be required to own a large cage for iguana. In fact, a lot of folks provide an entire room instead of a cage!

Of course, if you aren't yet able to make this space for your iguana, you could choose to postpone it until your iguana grows to its full size. Nevertheless, the iguana cage that you use should be large enough to contain the regular activities of your iguana. It cannot cramp the animal in any way. If you choose to wait until your iguana has reached its full size, you should at the bare minimum prepare and make plans for the future when you are going to require a bigger iguana habitat.

2) Heating - Iguanas are cold blooded. This means that they need to regulate their body temperatures by moving around their environment. What does this mean to an iguana owner? It means that you need to provide a variety of temperatures within the iguana habitat. This is so that the iguana is able to move from the different spots to properly control its body temperature. You must also try to have a source of heat other than light which can be turned on during the night time.

3) Moisture level - Iguanas necessitate high levels of humidity to live happily. They become easily dehydrated because iguanas aren't really inclined to drink very much water. This is due to the fact that the native habitats of iguanas have high levels of humidity and that keeps them from becoming dehydrated. Dehydration might lead to kidney diseases. This means that not enough humidity may hurt the life of your pet iguana. An additional reason to keep an iguana habitat humid is that humidity can help loosen shedding skin. This means that an iguana will have and easier time shedding if it is in a humid environment. If you truly want to keep your iguana healthy, you must furnish an iguana space that features a humidity of 65 to 75 percent.

4) Lights - Iguanas need a steady source of UVA and UVB light. Without question, the best thing that you should use is the sun. This does not mean that you should place your iguana enclosure in direct sunlight. The glass or material of iguana enclosures usually filter out the UV light which is needed by iguanas to produce vitamin D3. This vitamin helps in calcium consumption. This means that you need to allow your iguana to get in direct sunlight as much as possible. This will help in growing strong bones and reducing the risk of MBD which is a common cause of death with iguanas kept as pets.

Other than the sun, a cage for iguana should also include an artificial source of UVA and UVB light. This is to make up for days when the sunlight is not enough for your pet.

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Written by Mitch Tarala using tags: animals, exotic, exotic pets, family, Home, iguana, iguana cages, iguana care, lizards, Pets, reptiles, wild animals

Florida snakes, together with the many turtles, lizards, alligators and other reptiles are part of a complex wildlife structure that plays a marvelous role in Florida's ecosystem maintenance. Florida snakes species are numerous: there are actually forty-four species living in incredibly varied habitats, from salt marshes to fresh water marshes and dry uplands or coastal mangrove swamps to residential areas.

Only six Florida snakes are venomous, and they happily coexist with their non-poisonous cousins, even venturing into towns and cities too. The best way to stay out of trouble with snakes is to care enough to learn about their morphology and therefore become able to distinguish between these Florida snakes. Avoidance is the best approach a human being can adopt in relation to snakes.

The Coral snake and pit vipers are by far the most dangerous of Florida snakes. They can be identified by quite a wide range of characteristics. Pit vipers include the Rattlesnake, the Cottonmouth and the Copperhead. They all have in common: vertical eye pupils, a v-shaped head and facial pit sensors: one between the eyes and nostrils and the others along each side of the head.

The poison of these Florida snakes is haemotoxic, which means that their venom attacks the red blood cells, destroying the wall of the blood vessel and causing uncontrolled hemorrhage. Coral snakes on the other hand use neurotoxic venom, with the toxins in the venom acting on the body nerves and inducing paralysis.

Most of the snake bites reported every year in the United States are caused by Florida snakes or by rattlesnakes to be more precise. As their venom spreads very quickly throughout the body, the victim will die within less than thirty minutes without immediate anti-venom.

A major exception in this class of Florida snakes is the copperhead, because its venom very rarely, if ever, requires an antidote. Their toxin is the least powerful and therefore they are regarded as the least dangerous of all the poisonous Florida snakes.

It is because of the danger they present that poisonous snakes are the first kind to attract attention, however the most common of Florida snakes is the Black Racer, which is a non-toxic species that relies on very sharp fangs to capture its prey.

Although the usual tendency of home owners is to remove snakes from their properties, specialists stress the fact that, without them, rodents would breed out of control giving us even more cause for alarm.

Therefore, unless you have special causes for being worried, like snakes breeding in great numbers in your garden or shed for instance, there is no valid reason to upset the lives of these usually shy, helpful animals.

Interested in the Florida snakes? To learn more about snakes visit Caring for Snakes our new web site.

Written by Owen Jones using tags: advice, animals, exotic, florida, outdoors, Pets, poison, reptiles, snakes, toxins, tropical, USA, venom

Solar energy is a nice way of giving much-needed warmth and light, and there are several means to do so. But get this - lizards just might be able to offer you some tips on solar energy.

Nature can be quite amusing. The beauty and wonder of nature lies in how we can learn many new things by paying close attention. The same applies with solar energy.

Undoubtedly, you have seen lizards sunning themselves on rocks if you have ever gone hiking or even just sat outside. If you gave it any thought, you realized the lizard was using solar power to warm itself. It positioned itself to maximize the exposure to the sun by determining where it was going to get the maximum warmth. You could use the very same principles when it comes to heating up your house.

You want to make sure that your home gets the optimum amount of sun it can use for an entire year. The more surface area that is exposed, the more energy you can convert. Get it wrong, and your results will be very disappointing.

If you are located up north, then you can set up your house to receive sunlight in the south side. As a practical matter, this means the longest side of your house should face south. Also make it a point to place the most windows in this area of your house for energy conversion. Here is the second step following this all-important introductory procedure.

The Earth's position tilts different degrees throughout the year, one of the factors that gives us seasons. You need to realize this and position your house for the appropriate time of the year. You are probably not going to need heating during the summer. Since you won't need heating, there is no reason for you to orient your home to the summer sun. What you will need to do would be determine the angle in which the sun shines in the winter, and orient your house accordingly. The differences may sound subtle at first, but you will feel the difference in the winter - the time when your house can use some of that warmth.

The lizard, yes indeed, knows his fair share about how the sun works, and you might as well do so, because this could mean the difference between a cold winter and a surprising amount of heat during these normally frigid months.

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categories: Lizards,Exotic,Pets,Pets and Animals,Home and Family

Written by Robert Honeycutt using tags: exotic, lizards, Pets

It has become fashionable to have exotic pets these days - no longer are cats and dogs the only pets you keep at home. These pets include monkeys or other primates, lizards and other reptiles, and other non-traditional pets usually found in the wild. While these pets may make you look trendy and exotic, there are some points you should consider before buying an exotic pet.

First off, exotic pets come straight from the wild. They have not interacted with humans for centuries, and their natural instincts have not been blunted by domestication. You can take an exotic pet out of the wilderness but you will have a hard time taking the wilderness out of the exotic pet. This means they can be close to impossible to house train, or to have them do the tricks dogs and cats are wont to do.

Ask yourself several times over whether your home could be feasible for housing an exotic pet, or where you would place it if not inside your house. You will want to make sure your new pet does not escape back into the wild, so a regular cage or pet home will not do - your exotic pet's enclosure needs to closely resemble its natural habitat. Another useful tip is to find out how your pet functions in normal, non-domesticated situations. Monkeys, for instance, live in large groups and are used to being social animals. Locking a monkey in a cage on its own all day is going to make it unhappy, angry and possibly aggressive.

Also, exotic pets may have special dietary needs. We're not talking about dog or cat food you can find at any local store, but special food that might be hard to find and costly. Do your homework before buying an exotic pet - make sure its regular diet is affordable enough and not too scarce so you don't end up ordering special food by mail for the next several years.

If you have children, you should carefully consider the suitability of an exotic pet - and the danger they can pose to your children. Children are naturally curious, and while you may think a pet python is a great idea, your children could be in serious danger if they let it out its cage when you are not around. Since many exotic pets are unfortunately smuggled into the U.S., they may carry rare and hard-to-treat diseases because they don't get checked out properly, if at all, by a vet.

Owning exotic pets gives pet owners an opportunity to experience something new and different. However, it is still quite a bone of contention in pet circles whether exotic pets should be sold to consumers or left in the wilderness where they originally belong. Whatever your feelings on that issue may be, think carefully before you buy an exotic pet.

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Written by Ashley Brady using tags: exotic, Home, home and family, Pets, pets and animals

The species of snake called the spitting cobra is very unusual as it not only has a poisonous bite but it also spits venom into the eyes of its prey and aggressors. Contact of this venom with your eyes is very painful and can even blind you temporarily, therefore, if you get cobra venom in your eyes, irrigate them with water at once in order to prevent permanent tissue damage.

The King Cobra (Ophiophagus hannah) is also remarkable in this large family of snakes (elapidae) because it feeds almost entirely on other snakes with mice and small birds also falling prey to its poison.

The King Cobra is also a record-holder because of its size - it can reach almost twenty feet (585 cms) in length, which makes it the largest poisonous snake in the world. The most recent discovery of a new species of cobra was made in 2003 as part of an illegal shipment of exotic pets at London Zoo.

DNA studies revealed that this new species of snake is similar to the red spitting cobra but has different genes. It seems to originate from an area between Sudan and Egypt and it has been called the 'Nubian Spitting Cobra'.

Though highly dangerous when it senses a threat, a cobra will not attack if you leave it in peace, although the venomous spit can travel very accurately for two meters. If compared to the strike of a rattlesnake, the cobra is pretty slow in attack, and many bites prove blank, that is without envenomation.

According to a study conducted on Malaysian cobra snake victims only 55% of the bites involved venom release and the same statistics indicate a mortality rate of 10% for people bitten, since the toxins injected into the blood of the prey destroy the nerves (neurotoxin) , which induces respiratory failure half an hour after being bitten, giving you 30 minutes to get help.

The colouration of this snake is variable from light green-grey to black, whereas juveniles have alternate yellow and black bands.This snake is to be found all over south-eastern Asia.

Are you interested in the Cobras? To learn more about snakes visit Caring for Snakes our brand-new online resource.. This article, Spitting Cobras is available for free reprint.

categories: snakes,reptiles,unusual,pets,exotic,animals,florida,california,tropical,fauna,Thailand,Asia,outdoors,other

Written by Owen Jones using tags: animals, Asia, body-structure-of-spitting-cobra, california, exotic, fauna, florida, outdoors, Pets, reptiles, snakes, spitting-cobras-as-pets, Thailand, tropical, unusual