Monty Eating

He took the rat within a few seconds again, with enough force that he tore the tip of the tail off leaving it in the forceps.
He had been hiding all evening but as I was getting the rat ready across the room I noticed he had come out, he must have smelt it from 15 m away.

He ate this one backwards which is a first for me.

http://photos26.flickr.com/37574083_e3194a5d1b.jpg

http://photos31.flickr.com/37574136_0f198d02d5.jpg

Nice pictures! My digital camera stinks! You depress the shutter and there's a 2 second delay, so any movement causes a blur. My feed pictures came out pretty blurry, unfortunately.

So does mine, he was more or less stationary for these :)

Great pics! Wonderful to see your Monty chowing down so happily. I've said it before in othere threads but it worth saying again....with some good advice, understanding husbandry for these wonderful snakes and a little patience it seems these snakes really don't deserve their "poor/picky eater" rep. LOL

Can someone whose more experienced comment on ball pythons scenting abilities. I know they hunt by sensing the heat of their prey and the movement of it but we too have had our snakes react strongly to the smell of mice that are quite far away from them (like across the room!). Does smell also play a large role in their ability to find their prey?


~~Jo~~

I believe scent does play a big part in hunting with snakes. That's why the tongue flicks out. It brings the scents to a specialized organ (Jacobson's organ) which tells the snake all sorts of information. Here's a link I found.

http://naturalhistory.broaddaylight....AQ_77_164.shtm

Certainly Monty is not a fussy eater (success rate 4/5 and the one failure was during a shed). I don't have any experience with other BPs but I put a a lot of this down to the fact that he was a captive bred BP from a good breeder who had made sure he was eating reliably before selling.

That was a very interesting read, thanks! Popped that right into my Snake Health folder on my favorites LOL.

I agree a well started baby makes everything easier. We didn't get that with either of the two we currently have so I think a combination of good luck and really consistent husbandry has produced the two good eaters we have. Can't wait to get our Pastel, Finn, from Adam this fall. It'll be nice to start out with one that we actually know the history on and know it's been well raised from the get go.


~~Jo~~