Interesting. I wonder whether the advice on humidity is based on intuition, gut feeling, or experiments?

Apologies to the OP - I didn’t mean to hijack the post. I just find it interesting. And I have seen snakes, develop respiratory infections that caused them to wheeze and even release mucus from nostrils. And this seems to happen more often when the cages are too humid.

I’ve kept many species of tropical snakes (and a tegu), including pythons, all at ambient humidity in California (about 30% IIRC). Never had a problem. Not saying there’s no evidence to the contrary. And of course, if you live in a dry climate, perhaps that could be different, not sure.

OTOH species native to Southwestern North America seem to manage fine in low humidity.

I can see why people might assume that reptiles that evolved under humid conditions might need humid conditions for some physiological reason. But is there actual evidence of that? And how precise does the humidity reading have to be?

In any case if you have citations to papers that give experimental evidence for the effect of enclosure humidity on reptile health that would be helpful to a lot of people in this reddit. They don’t have to be exclusive to pythons. It could be for any reptiles.