Question about BP's turning on you...

[charliegirl]

I have had a few people that I have run across say that they would never own a BP again because when it got older, it turned on them. Before, they could handle it without a problem, but then the snake would turn and wouldn't want to be handled and would try and strike at them, sometimes successfully! How often does this happen? Is there something they could have been doing that would cause this behavior???

[Shadera]

Sometimes they have mood swings just like us. If you're attentive to their body language, you quickly learn when just to leave them alone. Illness, shed cycle, etc. can also cause them to act differently than they normally would.

I've got a few that are older that I can reach in and scoop up any time, then a few that are just always testy.

[Wh00h0069]

It sounds to me like something they did wrong. I have thirty-four ball pythons. The oldest is eight-years-old. Most are very docile. I have never had a docile one turn on me. I do have two that occasionally strike, but they have done this since they have been in my possession. I have found that they tend to strike while stressed out; therefore, the strikes are defensive strikes. The reason that the two snakes that I own that strike occasionally is because they are not handled often. I believe that if I handled them more often that they would eventually become less stressed, which would cause them to strike less often.

Back to my original point, it sounds to me like the reason that the ball pythons turned on their owners is because the ball pythons were stressed out. The ball pythons were stressed out because of something the owners were doing wrong. This normally happens because the ball python does not feel secure in its enclosure, which could have been the case with the ball pythons that turned on their owners. There are multiple other reasons that ball pythons become stressed.

[Freakie_frog]

Its a snake sometimes they bite.