Spotted Python Cage Lighting

Video Transcript

"The next thing we're going to touch on is lighting for your spotted python. Now, when I talk about lighting, I'm not talking about heating; we're going to get to that in a second. I'm talking about providing light. Some people are going to tell you that what I'm about to tell you is unnecessary, that pythons and snakes eat live, whole prey, they don't need this type of lighting. But me personally, I don't like to risks with my animals, and it's not going to hurt them to provide them with lighting either, and it's relatively cheap to do, so let's just go ahead and do that. What you're going to need is a UVB bulb, okay? This is a light bulb that's going to be some sort of fluorescent bulb, be it a compact like this guy or a tube fluorescent like you would normally buy at a store. They're specially coated to give off UVB light. UVB light is part of the light spectrum that helps promote certain vitamins and mineral productions within the body of the reptile as well as people. Reptiles need what's called vitamin D3 in their bodies, which is what UVB light promotes, to move calcium into the bone structure. So this is definitely not going to hurt, and it's definitely going to help if you have a baby and you're raising him up and doing a lot of calcium moving around. So, you're going to get yourself a fluorescent bulb, a UVB bulb, you can buy it at a pet store. I prefer the compact ones because they're smaller and they're a little bit cheaper to use. You need one of those, and you need yourself just a good old heat lamp, or any other kind of lamp fixture with an incandescent, threaded type of socket. And make sure you're looking at, when you?re going to be looking at UVB bulbs there's going to be different ratings: 5.0, 2.0, 10.0, it's telling you the amount of UVB in there. You're looking for a tropical one for the spotted python, somewhere around the 5 to 7.0 range should do you just good."