Do Reptiles NEED Lighting? NO! But... 

You are most welcome! Thanks for your support!

Haha thanks

You’re welcome!

You’re welcome!

Thanks very much Alex, glad you liked it!

As long as I haven’t confused you, that is a good thing! Thanks for your support, Dave 🙂

@@JTBReptiles not confused just wanting more. I’ve started looking more at cold end temps and surface basking temps since your recent videos and it makes perfect sense.

Brilliant!

Thanks, brilliant to hear!

@@JTBReptiles 😃

Yes, I would still recommend it. So long as it has opportunity to escape the light, it will be fine.

Which note was that? You sent loads 😂

@@JTBReptiles true 😂

Doesn't really matter 🙂 I only handle my animals when they WANT to be handled - when I open the enclosure and they climb out onto me. My Elaphe bimaculata never, ever did that, so I never held them. My corn snake, on the other hand, does it as a habit, so I hold him with some regularity.

@@JTBReptiles I wholeheartedly agree with this approach. I do the same with mine. Eventually they ALL decide they want to climb voluntarily onto my hand. I have cured very nervous and reluctant reptiles this way. I always let the others see their more adventurous members of my reptile family. They definitely learn by observation. Also soon as they decide they want to return to their viv/terrarium I let them. I see SO MANY comments about "my reptile won't let me....." "my reptile does not like me to....." I always advise patience, letting the reptile get used to your presence/smell/voice. Waiting for them to approach you. Leave your hand offered for inspection. Let them climb on and off at will. They inevitably will as their curiosity knows no bounds.

They actually do! Both wild and captive ball pythons have been observed basking. They frequently expose small parts of their bodies to the light and occasionally openly bask. My ball python usually chooses to curl up directly under her UVB light once or twice a month and cryptically basks every few days. Same goes for virtually all other nocturnal/crepuscular species, they bask while resting during the day. I would highly recommend checking out "Not Just a Pet Rock (Python regius)" on Facebook to learn more :)

Of course there is a scale of exposure to sunlight - from almost nothing in the case of fossorial species like amphisbaenians to regular full exposure in the case of diurnal, desert-dwelling lizards. The only species which never expose themselves to sunlight are those which obligately live in cave systems; even fossorial species will surface on occasion. For something like a ball python - which is neither fossorial nor an obligate spelunker - even passive access to sunlight will be a regular occurrence. There are many accounts of people watching these animals moving about in nature when there is light enough to view them, and that in itself tells us that they interact with sunlight. As the comment above states, people keeping these snakes in captivity with proper basking sites witness them being used, both in the full-body sense and cryptically. I am willing to bet that if someone spent more time looking at this species in the wild, they would find them openly basking on occasion, just as occurs in artificial surroundings. The problem with many excursions to find these animals is that people go and look for them at the wrong time of year, when they ARE hidden down holes waiting for better seasons to arrive. Even sun-worshippers do this: imagine going to look for bearded dragons in the middle of Australian winter; they'd all be buried away, and a conclusion could be reached that they never bask! For this reason, when people go out and say "I only found them in holes", you have to treat the observation with serious cation, weighing it against those where they have been found up trees and so forth.

Royal pythons absolutely bask - they tend to do it cryptically more often than not but they still do it. That is not new information, many old books state this as fact, for example the 1961 book on African Reptiles (by G. S. Cansdale) states the Royal python “in the wild is often encountered sunning in bright light.” Sillman, A.J., Carver, J.K. and Loew, E.R., 1999. The photoreceptors and visual pigments in the retina of a boid snake, the ball python (Python regius). Journal of Experimental Biology, 202(14), pp.1931-1938. state their slit pupils may be an adaptation for filtering UV. During two years of fieldwork Luca Luiselli found more than half of his specimens between the hours of 08.00 and 18.oo. Not enough is written today about this sort of wild observation, instead a wholly different folklore about this species 'only' living down holes or in termite mounds has arisen which, as JTB Reptiles pointed out earlier, is mainly due to importers tending to visit the habitat when they are easiest for the local hunters to track and locate - that is, when they aestivate during the dry season or are brooding on eggs and are spending a few months down burrows. Seeing this, people seem to have assumed that this is ALL they do which is sadly erroneous; and even during this time, the hunters are able to locate them because they leave fresh faeces at the mouths of their burrows where they tend to coil up in indirect sunlight (I have seen this myself whilst out there). For sure, providing a secure hiding spot to simulate this kind of burrow is certainly an important part of python husbandry and they certainly need to be able to get out from under the light whenever they want and hide in total darkness... but you wouldn't base the entirety of care of other species on the time they spend hibernating, and we shouldn't base the entirety of python care on the time they spend aestivating. It's already been demonstrated the snakes behave totally differently when lighting and overhead heating is provided and spend hours every day exposing themselves to it under experimental conditions if allowed the choice.

Python regius bask in nature. The amount of time spent basking, the time of day they choose to bask, and how often they bask can vary; however, basking is part of their natural history.