spiders with squishy body/ low muscle tone?

[hypersomniacjoo]

saw a nice spider at local pet store for a very good price....talked to the clerk who breeds bps and he says he popped and probed her and verified she is a female...however, when i held her, she felt...mushy, not firm like the other spider and like my 14 bps feel. the best way i can describe is it if she were a tube of saran wrap full of playdoh, instead of bones and muscle. clerk said she is a good eater/pooper and has no noticeable wobble....wondering if this is something that has been noticed with other spiders? or any other snakes? also not sure if this belongs in genetics or husbandry....

[Vasiliki]

My corn snake is pure muscle. Some corn snakes get a bit of 'junk in the trunk', but even though she is 'thicker', she definitely has muscle definition when she moves. I take her out regularly, let her climb and use her muscles.

I have a theory that some snakes, depending on genetics and whatnot, can have a lack of muscle definition due to their keeping. If they are forever kept in a smaller enclosure, limited things to climb on, limited interaction and 'coming out' to climb on people, they could develop a lack of muscle tone. This could also contribute to egg-bound females (since muscles are what move everything out when a female is laying or giving birth). I'd want my females to be fit and firm if they are laying.

I can't speak to this specific snake, as I can't see or handle her, but if she feels mushy she could be lacking muscle definition. Or there could be another cause that I am not experienced enough to comment on.

However, I can see how different animals would have different 'feels'. Also depends on how tense or relaxed she is as well.

[katiekat]

I think I know the 'mushy' feeling you're talking about.. almost like the snake rubbery/mushy floppy like? Its not limited to a certain snake species as far as I have noticed. I've had a rescue normal like that and also a rescue gtp yearling that sounds like what you are describing. It seems that snakes that 'don't feel right' are not healthy or well started. The normal died about a month after I rescued him, he was still eating and looked healthy but didn't feel healthy or girthy like he should have. The gtp was the same way after only a week! I'd stay away from it, maybe thats why its affordable and they know more than they are saying.

[hypersomniacjoo]

she was around 200gs so it wasn't an egg-bound thing. the guy who worked there wasn't commissioned, and it wasn't his store, it was a chain....and just happened to be a breeder with 100+ balls...i don't think he was necessarily trying to sell her to me. she was rubbery and soft ...skin felt softer than usual for a snake of that size....and mushy and kinda floppy. its too bad because she is a paradox spider but it would be money down the drain if she died from her soft-body issue. she wasn't leaving her head hanging like a weak, fresh out of the egg baby, but the rest of the body felt like she was full of jello.

[Vasiliki]

she was around 200gs so it wasn't an egg-bound thing. the guy who worked there wasn't commissioned, and it wasn't his store, it was a chain....and just happened to be a breeder with 100+ balls...i don't think he was necessarily trying to sell her to me. she was rubbery and soft ...skin felt softer than usual for a snake of that size....and mushy and kinda floppy. its too bad because she is a paradox spider but it would be money down the drain if she died from her soft-body issue. she wasn't leaving her head hanging like a weak, fresh out of the egg baby, but the rest of the body felt like she was full of jello.

No sorry. I mean that females with mushy bodies would be more likely later to develop egg binding issues, if they didn't develop more muscle tone as time went on.

Trust your instincts with it. If you want to give it a try and go for it, then feel free. But, given she is so young and feeling like that... It could be an internal problem. Or there could be no problem at all and she'll just get better as times goes on.

I'm not saying to go either way on the issue because, again, I haven't seen the snake in person enough to comment one way or another. But, I do like my animals to have muscle tone and strength.

EDIT:

I just noticed you said it was a Spider Paradox... for a good price? People tend to cost out Paradox animals higher than regular morphs, simply because they are visually different. If the animal is priced LESS than even the basic morph (ex: Spider), then I would treat that as a red flag personally. Especially from a chain store, whose goal is to make money.

[Coleslaw007]

If the squishy feeling is in her belly it could be internal parasites. I had a hatchling that was sent to me who's belly felt very squishy and he wouldn't eat so I brought him to the vet and had a fecal done and he had a pretty bad case of internal parasites. He was treated for them and now he eats fine. His belly felt almost like there was a lot of liquid in his gut.

[hypersomniacjoo]

yes, they were selling it for $120 for any spider, and they had two, a male and a female. the female was the smaller of the two. whole body was squishy, not just the belly.

[Andybill]

I have had a couple who were squishy and I have 2 theories that I think come into play at the same time:
This is based on my personal experience so it could be different for everybody.
1. The snake needs to be fed less often. When my snake got squishy I figured it was time to feed her less frequently.
2. When I was feeding f/t my snakes kinda half assed it when coiling so until my rat colony got to producing I would hold on to the f/t rat and kinda wiggle it for a bit to encourage my BPs to coil fully and firmly. I notice now that my 2 squishy girls are getting more solid and better muscle tone from this. I also bring out my snakes for handling a couple times a week to get them a wee bit of exercise. They all still feed great, shed wonderfully and defecate just fine. And I am still noting decent gains in size monthly. I have another theory regarding the muscle tone of snakes that feed live and snakes that feed f/t. The theory is that maybe snakes that are brought up feeding on live rodents tend to have better muscle tone than those who have been brought up feeding on f/t. I know my snakes know the difference between live and f/t because when converting them to live they didnt like how the rat moved about on its own and it took some time to get them feeding on the live rats leading me to believe they have become accustomed to f/t...

I have also heard that it may be time to upgrade the snake to a larger tub when the snake starts to get a little squishy. I have one that will be moving into a new larger tub in a couple weeks so we will see if that helps too.