The Complete Handbook of Reptile & Amphibian Habitats

Chapter 1: Understanding Reptile & Amphibian Habitats

A reptile or amphibian habitat is a man-made life-support system designed to replicate, as closely as is practical, the specific environmental conditions of an animal's natural range. This is not a decorative terrarium with a heat lamp; it is a piece of essential biological equipment. For the keeper, the enclosure is the primary interface for controlling the animal's environment. If you get the habitat right, you have solved the majority of your animal's health and behavioral problems before they start. If you get it wrong, you will spend your time and money visiting the veterinarian, fighting with scale rot, or dealing with a chronically stressed animal that refuses to eat.

To understand how a habitat works, you must first understand what it is not. A habitat is not merely a container that prevents an animal from escaping your living room. It is a self-contained climate system. In the wild, a rattlesnake in the Sonoran Desert experiences a temperature difference of over 30 degrees Celsius between the sun-baked rock at midday and the cool, dark burrow at night. A green tree python in the South Pacific experiences high humidity that fluctuates with the rainfall, dipping during the day and spiking in the late afternoon. Your job, as the keeper, is to engineer a small enclosure that can reproduce these daily and seasonal cycles with enough fidelity that the animal's physiology and behavior function normally. A habitat is a tool for managing a micro-climate, and