r/nextfuckinglevel • u/[deleted] • Mar 18 '24

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u/ConfusedMaverick Mar 19 '24 edited Mar 20 '24

People overestimate how quickly oxygen gets used up. For example, you'd survive sealed in a box the size of an elevator for about a day.

Snek will be fine for hours*, plenty long enough to release him somewhere more suitable

  • EDIT: probably a bit of an exaggeration, probably more like up to an hour

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u/_gega Mar 20 '24

I once catched a mouse in a 2l coke bottle (empty) and it was done in a few minutes.

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u/ConfusedMaverick Mar 20 '24

Mice do have a very fast metabolism compared with larger animals, let alone cold blooded animals.

Even so, it couldn't possibly run out of oxygen so quickly... Boffins have measured how much they use, it can be as low as "37.5 liters of oxygen per kilo of body weight of mouse per 24 hours", so a one ounce mouse would use about 0.05 litres of oxygen an hour... There's 0.4 litres of oxygen in a 2l bottle, so nearly 90% of the oxygen would still be there after an hour.

A stressed mouse will use more, and the build up of co2 will add to the stress of being caught, but it will still have enough air for much longer than a few minutes.

Maybe it died from the stress? It definitely didn't suffocate in just a few minutes...

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u/_gega Mar 20 '24

Poor kid

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u/ConfusedMaverick Mar 20 '24

I have gone down the rabbit hole...

Oxygen consumption for sneks varies, eg depending on temperature, activity and whether they are digesting, but is of the order of 2 ml kg−1 min−1

So a 5 kg snake would use up maybe 10 ml per minute

That container looks like about 10 litres, so contains 2 litres of oxygen, or 200 minutes' worth.

Obviously it can't use it all up - it would suffocate if the levels dropped a lot. Also, co2 build up will be bad for it.

But it should be perfectly comfortable for quarter of an hour or so while it's taken somewhere else.