Eating backwards.

Ass backwards if you pardon the pun...

I know the general advice seems to be that they just occasionally swallow tail first and that as long as they succeed there is no need to worry.

I just watched Monty struggle to eat a largish weaner rat backwards and it didnt loook like much fun. I'm sure he has done it before - I don't usually watch the whole process. I know he ate the rat pups backwards frequently.

Lately his feeding response is sitll fierce but he seems to have forgotten how to eat. He often spends a few hours trying each way - I've seen him chomp down on tail, mid section, back legs.

He's nearly 18m old and is about 850g. He gets one weaner f/t rat a week unless he is in shed and very rarely does he pass on a meal.

They can be funny when eating. This last feeding for mine on Thurs., he got the first one down no problem then, the second he struggled to "get it right". It was pretty amusing to watch him fold it in half and try to swallow. He even constricted it twice and I feed F/T pinky rats. He would back up, look at the rat like he was thinking about how to proceed, then he just ate it (twisted and all). I actually thought he would give up on it. If they are hungry...it WILL be eaten!

Loki always has trouble deciding which way to eat. More often than not, he ends up eating backwards. Once he actually lost the rat, and was sniffing around to try and find it, and started biting himself because he smelled rat!!!:P
How's that for silly?!

Hehe... just saw this thread. Fed Monty yesterday and he ate his medium rat backwards. Took him forever but he is so bullheaded. It seemed like he was getting frustrated as he drug the rat all around his enclosure and knocking everything over. He finally managed to get it down.


Peace!

Are you heating up the head on the prey to give him a heat signature to find? Besides defrosting and heating up the prey - touch the nose of it to a heat lamp for about 20-30 seconds to give the head a hotter heat signature for him to find.

I'll give that a go next time - thanks.

I've heard it's not good for them to eat live prey backwards, but I assume it's not a problem for frozen.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by qpmomma

I've heard it's not good for them to eat live prey backwards, but I assume it's not a problem for frozen.

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Why's that? Once it's dead, it's dead (and they don't eat prey live).