Lighting ??

[SlothHead]

Ok, this is a thread inspired by many that i have seen on here, and other places, which are considerably misleading.

Hopefully this wont be boring or technical, but hopefully some people will get out of it what they will and go away with a little more understanding.

Pic1 The light spectrum
Pic2 Light filtering
Pic3 Polarised light


Party globes and coloured globes
The simple idea behind this seems to stem from the idea that animals (your reptile) wont see the light and therefore wont disturb them.

Snakes cant see in the broad visible colours in which we can (they appear to lack the diversity of oil droplets), however, lizards, geckos, turtles etc, do contain multicolour oil droplets in order to perceive colour, with many species being able to see into the UV range.

Ok so that being said, the idea of coloured bulbs makes sense, Yeah? Well it does, however, it only works when you actually use the correct type of bulb.

Here is what i mean by that.

As per pic 3, polarising sunglasses will block out light that is transmitting in a particular direction. Fisherman that use polarised sunglasses will know what i mean by this. Obviously though, not all sunglasses are polarising, instead they simply shade the eyes from the light. This is analogous to the proper red/ purple glass lights and party globes.

In order for a globe not to affect the animal, the wavelength of the light that it emits must be restricted to the wavelengths that the animal can not see in, the problem is, party globes don’t restrict the wavelength of light, they simply are a tint and therefore lower the intensity of all wavelengths of the light. As per a normal pair of sunglasses.

A proper red or purple reptile globe will however filter the light (as shown in pic2) in order to only allow a particular wavelength of light through. Thus being analogous to the polarizing sunglasses.

Both types of sunglasses shade the eyes from sunlight, as both a reptile globe and a party globe both appear to give off the same colour of light, however, it is only the polarising glasses that allow fisherman to see into water, as it is the proper reptile globes that filter out particular wavelengths thus only emitting wavelengths in ranges that your animal wont see and therefore not disturbing them

Another simple way to think of it is in subtractive or mixed colour output.

If you mix red and green you get blue. So your eye tells you that you have blue, even though it is actually made from red and green. But if you just have blue, then that is all you have. Your eye doesnt know the difference between either, it sees blue in both, but the simple fact is that one is a mixture of other wavelengths, and one is a subtractive of the other wavelengths.

Sorry if this is a little long and boring but i found it fun, then again i am probably a little sick

[SlothHead]

UV

With reference to the above picture.

UV exists in three forms, UV-C, UV-B, and UV-A. These vary in wavelength.

Now to our eyes, due to our rods and cones we cant see into this wavelength area, so just by looking at a light, you can never know that it is emitting any wavelength of UV. The only way you can be sure is to measure this output.

So just because a light is purple or whatever the case may be, does not actually mean that it is emitting UV light.

Having said that, many lights will emit UV-A. Far fewer will emit UV-B, and most UV-B lights are fluoros or dual bulb incandescents.

There are currently no single tube incandescent bulbs that emit UV-B, as it is just not possible.

And you dont want to be using UV-C at all as this is a germicide type light.

Further to this, as you will read on any UV emitting bulb you should never leave these on more than 12 hours a day. Furthermore, you should never leave UV lights on over night regardless of the colour output. Doing so is like standing in the sun for the entire time and we all know what happens when we get too much sun and this is the same for animals.

Thus this is the primary principle behind photocycling. Periods of UV emittance on your animals allows the body to follow a natural or evolutionary cycle. Photocycling is important for your animals as it is important for us, and to this it is also important for us as well as animals to receive UV radiation in appropriate dosages.

There are many ailments to do with lack of sunlight in humans, thus it is only natural to think that animals that evolved on this planet would probably require the same sort of photocycling to maintain their particular evolutionary requirments.

As more research is completed in these areas, obviously more information will come to light. (pardon the pun)

[SlothHead]

The pictures

[SlothHead]

Sorry for the length, it was late, and articulation is a little harder at that time.

[Ozzie Python]

All makes sense, but a good read for us less technical people.

Was nice to read an informative post with lack of sledging, well done

The whole uv thing gets so confusing, to me anyway, as such i just refuse to buy a uv lights at the moment and will provide natural sunlight every weekend, much easier.

[SlothHead]

Ahh goodo, glad that someone understood what i was talking about, i generally dont even know what i am talking about most of the time.
Cheers

[stokedapollo]

very interesting

[weskys]

thank you very informative

[Viridae]

My experiments with fingerpaints as a kid tell me that if you mix red and green you do not get blue, you get poo brown.

[akira]

Very informative mate, thanks!

[Paliadon]

Nice one. Thanks for that Sloth Head.

[Earthling]

Looks like reasonable science to me Slothhead.
One question though, since party globes emit wavelengths that the animal can see, and that party globes are simply a tint and therefore lower the intensity of all wavelengths of the light, do they do this enough to not disturb the reptile? Many succesful breeders use party globes 24/7 with no obvious negative results, which would make me think that the party globes lower the intensity of all wavelengths of light enough to provide a healthy environment for the animal. The photocycling periods needed for a healthy reptile would be provided by a seperate light source such as a window/skylight or a day light.
Thoughts?

[pythonmum]

Originally Posted by Viridae

My experiments with fingerpaints as a kid tell me that if you mix red and green you do not get blue, you get poo brown.

Mixing pigment colours (paints) and mixing light are totally different. All of the pigments combined give you black, all of the light colours together give you white. (Slothead's Figure 2 is of pigment mixing, not light mixing.) Different animals see different parts of the spectrum. For example, many birds see into the UV range and pythons detect infrared with their heat sensing pits (except Aspidites, of course).

[SlothHead]

Originally Posted by Earthling

Looks like reasonable science to me Slothhead.
One question though, since party globes emit wavelengths that the animal can see, and that party globes are simply a tint and therefore lower the intensity of all wavelengths of the light, do they do this enough to not disturb the reptile? Many succesful breeders use party globes 24/7 with no obvious negative results, which would make me think that the party globes lower the intensity of all wavelengths of light enough to provide a healthy environment for the animal. The photocycling periods needed for a healthy reptile would be provided by a seperate light source such as a window/skylight or a day light.
Thoughts?

In answer to your question, do they do this enough to not disturb the reptile?

In all honesty there hasn’t been any experiments that i am aware of that have tried to test this. This is primarily to do with the fact that getting funding for reptile research is hard enough without trying to get it for an experiment process which is primarily restricted to the pet industry.

There is anecdotal evidence which suggests that they still appear to affect animals. This is primarily though in lizards and gecko species.

It is an interesting question though as the easiest way to solve this would be to do photon responsiveness of the rods and cones of snake species. This though wouldn’t be conclusive as each species has different eye sight and therefore doing such an experiment would be restricted to the species.

I wont comment on what other people do, as it really is just argumentative and a waste of time as there is no research on the topic to conclusively say that it does or does not affect the animal.

Thus, in keeping animals I would prefer to keep the enclosure environment as similar to as their evolved habitat. Thus I will still provide UVB to animals etc etc.

Cheers

[junglepython2]

Slothhead do you have any papers on reptiles spectral sensitivity, as I would be very interested in having a read?

Also coloured globes do absorb certain wavelenghts otherwise they wouldn't appear coloured. For it to only decrease the intensity as you have suggested it would have to be grey. Also polarised glasses don't restrict certain wavelenghts either, they just reduce polarised light off reflective surfaces like water.