Progress! Conditioning experiment

So I have been working for the past few months to condition my Dante to see how he responds to verbal and physical queues to come out of his cage on his own. I had really low expectations aside from I just wanted to see if I could do it.

I started observing how he behaved throughout the day and how different approaches to picking him up out of his cage impacted his stress levels. Now I used to simply handle him only a few days per week and would remove him without regard to his current activity and curiosity level. It would often require him to slowly come out of a balled state before maybe relaxing and exploring. What gave me this idea was his occasional sitting by the front of the glass looking back at me while i disinfected my hands.

After testing him during different hours of the day and removing him inside and outside of his hide I came to the observation he was far more active normally at night than during daylight hours. This gave me the idea after watching some monitor lizard training videos to try a similar approach of trying to lead him to the front of the cage sliding door.

For the first week I simply would sit in front of his cage and tap a few time to get his attention then just talk to him. I started noticing a definite interest in my presence and response to my talking. I kept this up a few times a week and would start engaging with him when he started to leave his hides in the late evening.

Fast forward to the past two weeks. I started opening his cage door slowly and prompting him verbally to come out. Now I know the words I say have little meaning but for consistency I would simply asking him to come out and play. He would occasionally move his head toward me and flick his tongue but stayed in his cage without coming near the door.

Jump to tonight. He was wrapped around his branches just hanging his head up looking at the top of the cage. I came and sat down and opened the sliding door. He slowly moved toward the door and after about 5 minutes sat his head on the door opening. After more verbal prompts he started to climb up my presented arm. Now it wasn't perfect and he did recoil a few times after bumping his head against some things but this was the farthest he has ever approached me while I was sitting in front of his cage.

After about 20 minutes I did manage to have him rest on my arm with his head and be about 1/4 out of the enclosure. I eventually picked him up with no signs at all of stress and him more relaxed than he has been in the past 7 years.

This was an important milestone and a great observation of how relaxed he can be allowing him to exit his home on his own. The amount of calm and at the same time curiosity was really inspiring.


Most of this may mean nothing and be wishful thinking but the joy of seeing a calm and inquisitive snake rather than a slightly balled up and slightly stiff snake makes this experiment definitely worth the effort. I have a long way to go to see how much of this is actual conditioning and how much is simple coincidence but the early results are extremely promising.

Very cool! Interested in seeing how this goes for you!

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Ragnarok has become so tame (conditioned, whatever you want to call it) to my presence, that when he is roaming around his tank, he immediately climbs onto my arm as soon as I open it! I don't even need to prompt him any more. Last night, he refused a meal, so I opened the top to retrieve the rat and feed it to Godzilla instead, and I had to push him down into the tank as he kept climbing on my arm and trying to get out! Such a puppy snake! lol. (I think he smells the other snakes and wants to carouse!)

Just wanted to update this to say that once Dante was in his new enclosure the experiments I did while in the old enclosure seem to be paying off. Perhaps it is the new single opening that makes it more accessible or just his calmness but he practically jumped out into my arms when I asked if he wanted out last night.

Another wonderful observation was his inquisitiveness in his new environment. Not only did he have to crawl over everything, he was actively sensing and experiencing every new item I added. The old items were sort of looked over but ignored but every new piece of clutter and decor added was stopped at, sniffed, touched with his face, stared at and tested. He was obsessed with the LED lights and actually opened his mouth and for lack of a better word "tasted" them. New artificial plants were pushed up against several times and looked at and he grabbed one of the probe cords I did not have tightly secured and actually swung on it (as in he pushed off the wall multiple times and was swinging to my horror). He even rearranged some of the cork flats I put in for texture to be more crawling around friendly.

My jaw was on the floor at the level of curiosity, ingenuity, and down right orneriness.. We are led to believe that snakes are pretty much emotionless lumps of flesh but I am in awe at the intelligence shown daily by my little baby. I know I should never put other animal traits to my snake nor anthropomorphize him but this really is a wonderful thing to watch at how he breaks with stereotypes of what a ball python is.