Quote Originally Posted by d_virginiana View Post
Hm... IS there a way to measure airborne hormones from reptiles? Hormones in a blood analysis would probably echo a hormone increase intense enough to be airborne, but that would be risky considering garters' small size. The thing that got me started thinking about all the different stages in shedding and what may trigger them was that first shed after Harley's skin issue. Where she hadn't been producing the outer layers of skin for months, you could actually see the new skin forming in detail. Very interesting stuff.
I was thinking maybe gas chromatography (or maybe the atomiser type of kit that are used for detecting traces of drugs or explosives, I'm sure the kit is available to configure for different substances) analysis from swabs inside the viv. If you were going to extremes in experimental design you could drive airflow between vivs and use some filter media to try to trap whatever you want to analyse. If the hormone is airborne it should be detectable from the air or surface swabbing... assuming of course you had a vague idea as to what you are looking for and the equipment is sensitive enough to detect it at the levels that influence shedding in the snakes.

All very much a thought experiment, because when you consider the equipment requirements, the time period and space requirements to keep the subjects for the duration, it's not an experiment that has any chance of being considered practical.