00:01Hey everybody we're here at the Central Florida Zoo's Orient Center for Indigo
00:04Conservation in Eustis Florida right outside of Orlando and today we're going
00:09to be looking at eastern indigo snakes.
00:19These are outdoor units so these are the enclosures with animals that we keep
00:24outdoors typically year-round. All of these animals live in these we have some
00:28makeshift gopher tortoise burrows that they can crawl into and then they will
00:32stay in those burrows throughout the winter unless it gets a little bit warm
00:35they come out to bask and everything.
00:39So indigo snakes are the largest snake here in North America.
00:43They can reach over eight feet in length. We have 28 enclosures that house indigo
00:47snakes outdoors year-round. We have mostly all of our breeding
00:51adults in these units. Unfortunately the areas where they live those high dry
00:55sandy habitats are the same exact areas where developers like to build houses,
01:00subdivisions, and businesses on so unfortunately their habitat gets
01:03destroyed because of that just like the gopher tortoise and a lot of other species.
01:11Indigo snakes in the wild will share burrows with gopher tortoises
01:15and they'll go down inside those burrows during winter when it gets a little bit
01:19cooler because those burrows can actually stay at a constant temperature.
01:22They actually will live in there with the gopher tortoises but also indigo snakes
01:26will use abandoned gopher tortoise burrows as well. Indigo snakes are non-venomous,
01:30but one of the cool things about indigo snakes is they are actually known for
01:33eating venomous snakes. They actually have a resistance to the snake venom of the venomous snakes
01:37of their area. Let's go take a look in the herpetarium where we have all of our babies.
02:00So this is the herpetarium and this is where we keep all of our baby indigo snakes.
02:10We have about 25 babies that have hatched out this year so far and then we also have some from
02:15last
02:16year and the year before that are being raised in here. We usually average about 7 to 10 eggs per
02:21clutch of eggs that are laid and we can expect that almost all of those are going to hatch out.
02:29Indigo snakes require a lot of care. They get fed, some of them get fed twice a week,
02:34some of them get fed once a week. They always require fresh water and clean enclosures,
02:39so we always make sure to provide some very sterile and clean environments for them.
02:48This one's only a month old. We release them at about two years old so they're a little bit bigger
02:54and they have a better chance of survival because of that size. So a lot of these babies that we
02:59raise here will be released in the Kineca National Forest in southern Alabama in partnership with
03:04Auburn University. We raise them in here because they feel comfortable in dark places. They don't
03:13really want to be bothered. They think of movement as something that could possibly harm them. They
03:17don't want to see all this action and stuff around them so we keep them inside where they're not going
03:22to be bothered too much. I really like that indigo snakes are very active. They always seem to be
03:26moving. They're very curious whereas a lot of other snakes are very, very shy and will seem to kind of
03:33just kind of sit in one place and they're real nervous. These guys seem to really always be
03:38curious and moving around so it's pretty neat to be able to take care of them.
03:43Thanks everybody for learning about eastern indigo snakes with me.
03:46They're one of my favorite animals and I hope they are yours too.
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