aggressive baby

[stano40]

Since starting with ball pythons this is the first time I have run across an aggressive bp, let alone being a baby.

My wife adopted this latest one, which would make seven in her herd of bp's, from petco. She was told this one was brought back 3 times for being overly aggressive and has not eaten since being returned.

She asked to see the bp. Problem 1 is the way petco handled the bp. They would use the hide on the bp to hold down the snakes head and them grab the bp from behind. To me that's a big no-no.

Well, Michelle brought home the bp and it was doing pretty good sitting in her hand while talking to the bp gently and rubbing the bp's body gently. I know that sounds silly but at first it seemed to calm the bp down.

That was a mistake, it lunged for her and missed her thumb. Figuring the bp was Hungry she put the bp back in its house & tried a f/t fuzzy mouse. The snake literally struck passed the mouse, out at her and tagged her finger which drew blood. She left the mouse hoping the snake will go for it. I told her she should use tongs to feed El Diablo.

Later she took the F/T mouse out and tried talking gently to the bp, but all it did sitting in its enclosure was to coil up and strike at her. It missed this time, I guess it's aim was off or it's getting tired. I told Michelle if it were venomous she would be dead a few times over.

This is where we are with the terror bp and looking for hints on maybe what to do to calm it down. Future plans on using the bp for breeding. Michelle is new at popping hemipenes but believes its a male. She has a video on how to pop hemipenes and looked at this procedure on the internet.

We don't want to give up on the snake but if it's doing this now, being a baby what's it going to be like when it grows up,

Any advise would be helpful.

bob and michelle

[dragoneye]

wow yea i know what your going through....

I have a Burmese Python and it gets tempremental from time to time... in all honesty. just make sure you are pursistant with handleing it, and your lucky its just a baby. if something like that happened with mine, i would probably be injured pretty bad considering its about 8'-0"....

the best thing i can suggest is the calming meathod that people use... talk to it, prove to it that your not a threat, you dont know what the snake went through from birth till that point and from what you do know it wasn't good... the only way to change that is to get the snake to see that your not a threat at all and that you are going to try and take care of it. just be gentle and careful with it.

here are a few things that i did...

-let it sit in its tank for a few days to let it get firmiliar with its surroundings
-make sure to change the water dish daily and do it to a point that you aren't "bugging" him
-after a while you can tell when its comfortable with its surroundings, when its head and body are positioned away from your hand touch near the end of it (rear 3/4's) and see how it reacts (weather it tenses up or if it stays relaxed) oh and make sure your hands are warm lol they dont like cold.... but thats all you need to be able to tell if they will allow you to handle them, if they are tense, leave them be (you can tell this by the muscles tightening and pushing your hand back a bit)

if that fails, try it again every few days and it will slowly realize ok ok ok you want to pick me up sheesh....

hope that helps.

[stano40]

Thanks for the advice, I'll pass it on to Michelle.

You know, I know snakes don't have ears and it always sounded silly to talk to snakes. How do they hear? Through vibrations?

So, I looked it up and this web site would explain it better than I can.

www.anapsid.org/torrey.html

bob

[dragoneye]

Vibrations like us, but they can kind of smell it with their orfisus like their toung, nose, and the thing behinde their head that is like what most lizards have but its not open...

mine reacts to my voice, perhaps not as well as i would like but it can recognize tone to a small ammount, and it knows what im doing when i take the heavy stuff off the top of the cage lol so there is some intelegence

stano40 said:

Thanks for the advice, I'll pass it on to Michelle.

You know, I know snakes don't have ears and it always sounded silly to talk to snakes. How do they hear? Through vibrations?

So, I looked it up and this web site would explain it better than I can.

www.anapsid.org/torrey.html

bob

[Patrick Kubeja]

Hey Bob

The Ball python may be wild caught. They're more aggressive than the captive bred ones. I would ask the pet store if it was wild caught. I had a wild caught Amazon Tree Boa. Man was that thing mean!! That is not the greatest first snake to get, but they are mean and wild caught meaner LOL!!!!!!!!!