A snake's ability to recognize or bond with it's owner?

[Burn Aggression]

Well I wouldn't exactly call this bonding, but my snake loves my brother. She acts differently with him than with me. She likes us both, as I can tell she is comfortable when I hokd her, but when she smells my brother she almost gets excited if that makes sense? This isn't proof of bonding, just my experience.

[Jhill001]

This thread is like 4 years old.

[ringorock]

This thread is balogna. Snakes do bond. I once went surfing with my Royal and ended cutting my foot on dinosaur shells. Since he had no legs, he couldn't swim me back in, so we laid around on the board talking about hot girls until the dolphins came to help out.

[Aedryan Methyus]

I don't think that snakes (or pretty much any other animal) can feel "love", but I think they can feel and express pleasure to some degree, which is an emotion, just as fear and anger. When I am holding my snakes I feel like they are content and if anything, they probably get pleasure from my body warmth. Whether or not stroking and petting them truly brings them any pleasure, who knows? But, I would say that it at least seems to add to their contentment, calmness and overall feeling of safety and tranquility. I would go as far as to say that they seem to actually enjoy being held and being given the freedom to crawl around and explore and observe all of the surroundings.

It is my understanding that snakes possess the ability to learn, associate and remember patterned behaviors with things such as hook training, which they do in fact, seem to do. So, if that is true, I don't see any reason why they wouldn't be able to remember and associate us with other repetitive things we do, which brings them whatever degree of pleasure. I have seen videos on Youtube, where a guy will pull his Blood Python's tub out and the snake will crawl up out of the tub and just sit there letting him pet his head as if to greet him and then the snake will crawl right out into his arms. That at least "seems" to demonstrate some level of associated behavior and pleasure.

If it is at all possible to form any sort of actual "bond" with snakes, I definitely don't think that snake keepers/breeders with walls and walls of racks full of snakes that get very little (if any) human interaction are gong to be able to develop any level of "bonding", because there isn't enough hours in the day to spend that kind of time with each animal. Also, venomous snakes are obviously programmed A LOT differently and have much different temperaments than non-venomous snakes. I can't say that I have ever seen a tame captive bred Rattlesnake or Cobra...

Who cares how old this thread is??? I think it is a very fascinating topic. I would love to see some actual scientific studies done on this subject...