what sand do you all use for your womas?

Aussie Pythons & Snakes Forum

Help Support Aussie Pythons & Snakes Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Status
Not open for further replies.

burningfyra

Not so new Member
Joined
Feb 7, 2017
Messages
30
Reaction score
9
Hey all, I'm looking at sand being my substrate for my future woma so that I can best observe their natural digging and burrowing behavour but I'm wonding weither I should get normal red desert sand or something a bit higher in clay content so that the burrows stay formed a little better.

Those of you that keep them on sand what do you use?
 
Do you want to see it just sort of push sand around hoping to find something which isn't there, or are you actually wanting to see it make a burrow?

If you just want to see it shove the substrate around, use whatever you like. Red desert sand is collected from the top of dunes, and if you've ever been on a sand dune you'll know the sand up the top is impossible to burrow in. That being said, I don't believe they are capable of constructing burrows (as in, actual holes in the ground which remain as holes in the ground). They may occasionally bury themselves in loose sand (any type of loose sand or Breeders Choice or wood chips or leaf litter etc will do for that) but if you want them to actually construct a burrow you'll find it's impossible for some reasons and completely impractical for others.

For various reasons sand isn't a great substrate choice for snakes other than things like sand boas. Yes, they can access sand in the wild but they can also get away from it. An enclosure covered in sand where they can't get away from it isn't best for the snake and it's very messy for you.
 
sand isn't a great substrate choice for snakes other than things like sand boas.
don't woma pythons have similar adaptations that make them more suited towards sand? I might just set them up in something like Breeders Choice and get a clamshell and fill that with sand for the snake to investigate while out of the enclosure.
 
don't woma pythons have similar adaptations that make them more suited towards sand? I might just set them up in something like Breeders Choice and get a clamshell and fill that with sand for the snake to investigate while out of the enclosure.

No, not at all. Snakes like Kenyan Sand Boas which spend their lives in sand are completely different from Womas. They have very different body shapes, very different scales, a different way of moving their bodies and a completely different way of life. Sand Boas actually do have scales and skin which are adapted to a life spent in sand, Womas do not. Keep in mind that even something like a sand boa does not construct burrows. They move around in dry, loose sand or soil. They don't 'dig' in sand, they more 'swim' in sand. They never make a hole in the ground. They move through dry, loose sand. If they are ever in a burrow it was made by something else.

A lot of people say 'they live in areas with sand, so they should be able to deal with sand'. In reality, a lot of Woma distribution isn't particularly sandy, and while yes, wild Womas do sometimes crawl over sand, they also have the opportunity to get well away from sand whenever they want to. In desolate sandy deserts with nothing but dry sand, you will not find Womas. Again, your 'red desert sand' is collected from the top of sand dunes, and you will never find a Woma at the top of a sand dune. That's not an environment they will ever go to, even though they may live just 10s of metres away from that microhabitat. Actually, you basically find nothing living at the tops of those sand dunes - they deliberately collect sand from lifeless sand dunes because it's the cleanest sand.

A 5' snake in a 4' enclosure with sand all over the bottom is going to be constantly exposed to sand all day every day whether it wants to be or not, which is a very different situation from having access to sand but generally not going near it.

Imagine the argument 'humans naturally tend to live near water and are known to naturally swim, so I am considering keeping my human in a swimming pool with a mattress floating on top for it to sleep on'. Yes, humans do naturally live around water and get in the water, but we will have all sorts of skin and lung problems if we are *constantly* wet and breathing very humid air. We will probably live and be healthy enough for a few days, maybe weeks or even months, but eventually we're probably going to have issues come up. If we weren't able to talk, it might be difficult to explain that this environment is bad for us, and since we seemed okay for a few days or weeks our owner may not realise the wet environment was the problem. If the alien keeping us had never seen wild humans, or had only seen pictures in books of wild humans and they were of humans swimming and playing in water, they may think we were primarily aquatic. I've been to places where Womas come from where there is no sand to be seen, and I'm not aware of any natural Woma environment which entirely consists of dry sand. If you wanted to make a Woma enclosure the size of a large room and one corner was sandy, sure, it wouldn't be a problem, but all else being equal the snake probably wouldn't particularly like that dry sandy corner. If you put a Woma into a pit of sand for a while it will deal with it but it probably won't particularly like it.

Australia doesn't have any particularly well developed sand specialist snakes, especially common in captivity. There are some popular captive options overseas like Kenyan Sand Boas (but as I said, these don't actually burrow either). If you want a reptile which actually does create burrows there are several good gecko options including the good old Nephrurus levis, and if you want something which lives like a sand boa there are some degenerate-limbed skinks which are easy to keep but not particularly common (or all that fun to keep) or you might like to consider Sand Swimmer Skinks (very pretty, fun and easy to keep and pretty widely available).
 
@Sdaji Thank you for that in depth write up! That clears things up for me and I really appriciate it, my reasoning for sand was to give it a natrually enriching substrate but as sand is more something that they have around them but is not really something they are always in that helps, I'll defienity be going with a more common substrate that won't have the side affect of getting stuck in the tracks. ;)

I'll also google a bit about Sand Swimmer Skinks, they seem cool!
[doublepost=1569053523,1569053385][/doublepost]@cagey I think that is what I am leaning towards now, it seems pretty common and I do quite enjoy the look of it.
 
@Sdaji Thank you for that in depth write up! That clears things up for me and I really appriciate it, my reasoning for sand was to give it a natrually enriching substrate but as sand is more something that they have around them but is not really something they are always in that helps, I'll defienity be going with a more common substrate that won't have the side affect of getting stuck in the tracks. ;)

I'll also google a bit about Sand Swimmer Skinks, they seem cool!
[doublepost=1569053523,1569053385][/doublepost]@cagey I think that is what I am leaning towards now, it seems pretty common and I do quite enjoy the look of it.

Cheers :) Yep, people who have never seen a wild Woma or don't have a good grasp of how wild Womas live (the vast majority of people) can easily be mislead to think Woma Pythons live in sand like a Sand Boa does. Actually, some species of Sand Boas live nowhere near sand. I was surprised last year to see them in lush tropical Indian jungle (though not any actual sand specialist types). This myth is very common about Womas so it's easy to be confused when you're new. The vast majority of Woma keepers have never seen one in the wild and if they do imagine wild Womas I'd bet most of them would imagine them out basking on dry red desert sand, perhaps on a dune, which isn't where they actually live (even if they live right next to a red sand dune).

Sand Swimmers are lots of fun! Very pretty lizards too. Also plenty of myths about keeping them including them needing UV (they totally and utterly don't, but do make sure you regularly give them calcium and multivitamin supplements - they'll do very badly on a captive diet without the supplements and UV will not help). They're not quite as extreme in their sand adaptations as some other species and I've seen them in areas without sandy soil, but they will do the sand swimming thing and it's a common, normal thing for them.

As for the Woma substrate, any particulate substrate like Kritter Krumble will let you watch them shove the substrate around just as well, probably better than sand, and with far less hassle. It's really not going to be that amazing but it will do every positive thing (all barely any of it) sand would have done.
 
Some years back before licensing came in a couple of mates and myself used to venture up to the black soil and stoney ridge woodland country in the Brigalow Belt around the Surat/St George area of Qld, where we'd often find Womas foraging around on the ground at night and occasionally sheltering in hollow logs on the ground and amongst exposed tree roots during the day.

Here's a couple of links for anyone interested. The first one is to an interesting 2013 paper by Melissa Burton of Queensland University regarding Radio Tracking of a number of Womas where she reports on arboriality, excavation and foraging. Worth a read if anyone would like to know a bit about wild Woma activity.

Second one is a bit of random footage I found taken by a couple of tourists of a wild Woma as it was travelling across a sandy track (location unknown but it looks to be similar to habitat out around Alice Springs.

https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/da...Kw5dkpd813n770ZAuljbkG33EE443Wo6DG5sVl3vHhA__

 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest posts

Back
Top