Closed mouth strikes

I just read on another post about someone getting tagged with a closed mouth strike... I didn't know BPs did that! :rolleyes: Jackson struck at me once and hit my hand, and I remember thinking, "how did he miss biting me?", but I thought he had just made a mistake... so BPs do warning strikes?

Ha, man, I wish I got warnings. :rolleyes: Marci always ends up drawing blood. Doesn't hurt, but looks cool. :P

Most BPs do warning strikes. I mostly only get it from babies in shed, and it's usually because the dog was poking her nose in to take a look.

Most of the bites I get are also from babies/yearlings, but those are generally feeding errors. Plenty of warning strikes are open-mouth, but they use very little teeth compared to feeding errors. A lot of times I just get gummed and drooled on.

....and yeah, I've had exceptions. Mr. Nibbles and Nancy, the Pewter Who Knows How to Make it Hurt. They both tagged me non-stop for their first 12-18 months. After a while, I swear it wasn't defensive: Mr. Nibbles was tagging me for fun, and Nancy out of sheer spite. I had to walk away from both of them several times because they made me so angry.

Now I'm breeding Mr. Nibbles and Nancy together to make pewter het pieds, and I'm kinda worried about the evil little monsters I might be making...

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Originally Posted by blueberrypancakes

I just read on another post about someone getting tagged with a closed mouth strike... I didn't know BPs did that! :rolleyes: Jackson struck at me once and hit my hand, and I remember thinking, "how did he miss biting me?", but I thought he had just made a mistake... so BPs do warning strikes?

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I don't know about bp's doing close mouth strikes, never been hit. I do know about anaconda close mouth strikes,lol. But, I would say it's probably a general snake behavior. My one normal bp use to strike at me just for walking by to close or sitting on my bed wrong when he or she was on it.
Now, that I've been hit a few times from my annies open mouth (yes blood was drawn). I laugh at any strikes my normal's do whether open or closed mouth. Even if they were adults I would still laugh because I don't think bp hit's are as hard as anacondas? And, at least you can predict when a bp want's to strike. Annies, they really don't give much or any warning. The slightest thing that irritates them could induce and they can turn there head 90 degrees and chomp down. :P

I've personally never been punched by a BP like that, but I have had a corn and a blood punch me :P so yes, I think pretty well all snakes do it from time to time ,but some are just more prone to it.

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Originally Posted by loonunit

Most BPs do warning strikes. I mostly only get it from babies in shed, and it's usually because the dog was poking her nose in to take a look.

Most of the bites I get are also from babies/yearlings, but those are generally feeding errors. Plenty of warning strikes are open-mouth, but they use very little teeth compared to feeding errors. A lot of times I just get gummed and drooled on.

....and yeah, I've had exceptions. Mr. Nibbles and Nancy, the Pewter Who Knows How to Make it Hurt. They both tagged me non-stop for their first 12-18 months. After a while, I swear it wasn't defensive: Mr. Nibbles was tagging me for fun, and Nancy out of sheer spite. I had to walk away from both of them several times because they made me so angry.

Now I'm breeding Mr. Nibbles and Nancy together to make pewter het pieds, and I'm kinda worried about the evil little monsters I might be making...

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You're in for it! Haha! Though honestly, personalities aren't genetic so you're probably ok.

I have a normal het albino who's strike happy. I call her Meanie Snake. She hisses and puffs and strikes whenever I even open her tub. She's even struck at me through the tub before. She doesn't strike closed mouth either. Not that it hurts, she's a whopping 350 grams.

Sarabi, our adult female does this to ME all the time. Everyone else she goes full teeth :P

Along the lines of other snakes do closed mouth I've only experienced are babies.

One of my normals is just a jerk like that too. He usually tags me at least every other time i get him out of his tub.

At first they were pretty knarly strikes, full teeth and strength, but now he just kinda taps my hand without trying to dig his teeth in, but his mouth is still open. They aren't nearly as forceful either despite he's well over twice the size he was when I got him, so I think he's doing it more out of habit than anything.

He's still probably my favorite snake just cause even if it's not good personaility at least he has some haha.

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Originally Posted by devildog_dk

One of my normals is just a jerk like that too. He's still probably my favorite snake just cause even if it's not good personaility at least he has some haha.

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Haha, yeah, I described Mr. Nibbles as "having personality" to the guys at The Painted Python last year, and they said, "oh, is THAT what we're calling it now?"

(Nancy actually got quite a bit meaner before she got nicer! And she still remembers how to make it hurt when she's in the blue...)