Are ants harmful to ball pythons?

[Pollard89]

I woke up this morning to find a small infestation of ants in my lounge, are they harmful/dangerous to ball pythons?

[Neal]

I woke up this morning to find a small infestation of ants in my lounge, are they harmful/dangerous to ball pythons?

I'll start by saying you don't want ants in your BP's enclosure. They could annoy him and they could of gotten into some kind of chemical or some other agent like that and for whatever reason something could happen, not likely but could. I'm not sure if ants can carry parasites or not and I'm sure with the size it's probably not anything different then what would be in the air, so just for the sake of safety I would say you don't want ants in your BP tank.

Now that's assuming that they're not the fire ants, as we call them here the ones that bite. Those ants, if enough could cause harm to your BP, a few would probably be nothing more then an irritation, but you could have bad reverse effects if they did annoy him, he may change his temperament altogether. That's just my opinion though.

[Pollard89]

Nope not fire ants, I'm in the UK so just regular garden ants! I've checked my racks and there's none in there, I was just concerned cause there was about 10 in my lounge this morning randomly and it's never happened before, and I keep my ball pythons in the lounge!

[Neal]

Nope not fire ants, I'm in the UK so just regular garden ants! I've checked my racks and there's none in there, I was just concerned cause there was about 10 in my lounge this morning randomly and it's never happened before, and I keep my ball pythons in the lounge!

They can still bite, not sure if they can sting or not. What I would do is take some duct tape, and lay it around the floor on the racks and tape the very outside down so the ants HAVE to walk over the duct tape to get to the racks, and the duct tape I'm assuming will hold them. I was helping a friend move into his new apartment, and we seen two of those Water Roaches(I call them). One I managed to step on and the other went between his cabinet and dishwasher, and neither of us could figure out how to move the dishwasher(may of been bolted down) so I asked if he had duct tape, he said he did and I laid a strip of it in front of the opening. Well he called me the next morning and woke me up just to tell me that my plan worked, the roach was trapped on the duct tape.

Hope this helps.

[Pollard89]

I'm pretty sure they don't have a sting, cheers for your advice though Neal, I'll have to go grab myself some duct tape!

[Neal]

I'm pretty sure they don't have a sting, cheers for your advice though Neal, I'll have to go grab myself some duct tape!

No problem my friend, that's why we're here to give advice. Also if you figure out where the ants are coming from you can interrupt the trail the leave and they will take new paths or another thing to do is if you find the origin, put some duct tape near the source and it'll eliminate the ants inside your home altogether.

[Pollard89]

Cheers Neal, it's greatly appreciated, I've never seen them in the house before in the year I've lived there, I'm presuming its an unfortunate one off now but my patio area where I also saw them is now full of traps!