Seven More Founders and Our Intake System
Seven more founders arrived on October 27, bringing the study to eleven founders, all in quarantine. We also put our new intake system to work for the first time.
Founders so far. The eleven founders come from three breeders: R&R Reptiles, Goth Exotics and Boa ERYX. Together they cover seven unrelated lines, plus three control animals.
- Goth Exotics: three animals, three unrelated lines.
- Boa ERYX: four animals, three lines. Two of the four are related (their fathers are brothers), so they count as one line.
- R&R Reptiles: four half-siblings (same father, different mothers). One stays in the study as a line of its own. The other three are controls: they show how much behavior varies within one family, which is the baseline we need before comparing lines.
More lines are still to come from SoFlo and SNK. When they arrive, the plan is 24 founders from five breeders: 21 study founders covering 20 unrelated lines, plus the 3 controls. That's twice as many lines as our original plan of about 10 lines from 10 breeders. We promised to document every change to the plan, so this one is written up under Protocol Version History on our Methods page: what changed, when, why, and which animals it affects.
Quarantine. We added two more quarantine tubs, QT-03 and QT-04, so there are now four. Each tub has its own printed label the cameras can read. QT-01 holds the R&R four, QT-02 holds the Goth three, and QT-03 holds the Boa ERYX four. Two overhead cameras watch all of the quarantine tubs day and night. Both are now on our public Live page, so anyone can look in.
Intake system. Every new animal goes through the same steps before it goes into quarantine:
- It is placed on a printed ID photo card that sits on a gram scale under an overhead camera.
- The card has a mid-grey centre, millimetre rulers on three sides, and a printed marker in each corner. The markers let the software correct for camera angle and measure the animal.
- The camera takes a top-down photo of the animal, and the scale's display is in the same shot.
- The weight and the photo are saved straight to that animal's record. No paper notes and no copying numbers by hand.
The seven new founders weighed between 13 and 20 grams at intake.
Why the photos matter. Every sand boa's back pattern is different. These intake photos are the first reference image for each founder. Later we'll use them to tell individuals apart on camera, and to check that the right animal is in the right tub when tubs come out for cleaning. For now, a person still confirms every ID.
Coming next:
- Finishing the rack and moving it into its room
- Quarantine continues before the founders move onto the rack
- Comparing the intake photos with what the cameras see each night