Need help with research project

Excellent news, Judy! I'm glad to hear you will be joining our ranks. :)

i just realized, marla is the master of the organized post.

Man, burms have got such a bad rep and for an uneeded reason. The only giant snakes a keeper should be extremely weary of is condas and retics. They come hardwired mean. Oh, and scrubs if you count them. Burms are like giant bp's, docile by nature. Just they are more popular and sold more frequently to newbs who make stupid mistakes. Where as retics and condas typically end up with trained keepers. Big difference. And burm numbers are higher so it really doesn't count. Like that dog comparison, really unfair and a non-balanced view in my opinion. Yeah, it's great that Kaplan wants to make herps look like shining stars compared to them, but flawed none the less.

Dogs are a massive part of people's lives. Everyone and their brother has one. So of course a lot more people will get bitten.

And truthfully, I've only taken one good bite from one of my bp's in the past 1.5 years. And that was a feeding error. I get bitten/scratched more times in a week then I've ever gotten from keeping snakes.

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Originally Posted by Wizill

i just realized, marla is the master of the organized post.

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Hee hee. I've been doing it a while. Thanks. :)

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Originally Posted by BallKingdom

Man, burms have got such a bad rep and for an uneeded reason. The only giant snakes a keeper should be extremely weary of is condas and retics. They come hardwired mean. Oh, and scrubs if you count them. Burms are like giant bp's, docile by nature. Just they are more popular and sold more frequently to newbs who make stupid mistakes.

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I don't think anyone was dissing burms. They do seem to be generally docile from what I've seen and read too, but they're big enough that a mistake with them can be a lot bigger than a mistake with a bp, like a mistake with a puppy can be a lot bigger if you make it with an adult dog. Heck, I've been pulled to the ground by a half-dozen german shepherd-mix puppies and that was because they were glad to see me. Imagine if they were full grown and grumpy.

John, I certainly wasn't trying to build burms up as dangerous to make bps look better. All I did was point out actual recorded instances of serious trouble. Three out of eight identified burms as the culprit. Two of those eight didn't identify the snake. But of those eight instances that I found are the ONLY non-venomous snake fatalities in the last twenty five years! (In North America) Even with the tens of thousands of them out there, such instances are extremely rare. Unfortunately, when one occurs, it gets blown so far out of proportion by the media and outfits like PETA.

In every instance that I could follow up on, it could be seen that blatant negligence on the part of the snake's keeper was the culprit for allowing such a tragedy.

I adore burms (and really like all the other giant snakes as well) and someday, after hubby retires, I will be going through similar arguments most likely, to convince him that I'm ready to keep a burm.

And I agree with you that the statistic that Kaplan used regarding dogs is a bit misleading because there are a magnitude more dogs in our society than giant snakes. What would be more informative would be to compile a chart showing the percentage of fatal attacks "per capita" of each animal.

Anyhow, I hope you didn't think I was down on burms. I think they're amazing!

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Originally Posted by BallKingdom

Man, burms have got such a bad rep and for an uneeded reason. The only giant snakes a keeper should be extremely weary of is condas and retics. They come hardwired mean. Oh, and scrubs if you count them.

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Gotta disagree.
There are plenty of peole who have retics, annies, and scrubs that are docile. I think the difference is in a) the experience of the keeper that owns the giant snake, and b) the feeding response is proportionally larger.

Burms are extremely cheap in pet stores across the US. This, combined with the bad advice frequently given by pet store employees, leads to Burms coming into the hands of keepers that don't have the knowledge, respect, or experience to handle a giant constrictor. I think retics would probably be in the same boat if Petco carried them, but I've never seen a retic at Petco. People make the impulse buy of a "cute baby burm" at Petco, and don't understand how large they get, as well as not understanding the feeding response of a giant constrictor.
I don't think it's fair to call a snake "hardwired mean." They are simply creatures of instict, acting on those instincts. The fact that they are so big, and can do damage to large animals (humans) is what makes people perceive them as mean. If BP's got twenty feet long, they would probably have the same instinctual actions/reactions as burms, retics, annies. It is easier for a four foot long snake to slither away and hide from a threat than it is for a twenty four foot long snake to hide, thus the retic or annie is more likely to stand it's ground.
Inexperienced keepers forget that these animals are wild animals, who have not chosen to be captive, and will never be truly "tame".

I think that a responsible keeper has a great amount of respect for his/her giants, and must always be leery of them, no matter how "tame" they have been in the past.

lemme' just clap a little bit to that post there randy. bravo.

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I think that a responsible keeper has a great amount of respect for his/her giants, and must always be leery of them, no matter how "tame" they have been in the past.

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Bravo, beautifully put.
As for the large boids, I have worked with many burms, retics, rocks, anacondas and scrubs.
All are beautiful animals that deserve our respect. There is absolutely no such thing as a tame snake. yes BP's won't bite (normally), but that could also be the large reason they are so readily wild caught. that doesn't mean they are tame.
I have seen first hand the ignorance that people show towards such large boids on many different instances. One will be forever in my mind:
A gentleman in my state (CT) had his large retic out and about in the bathroom. for whatever reason the man decided to HAND FEED the snake a chicken (yes accually hand feed the snake a chicken) and (of course) the snake nailed the chicken and the mans hand at one time. the snake proceeded to coil around the chicken & man to constict (as that is what they do). the snake actually ripped the toilet out of it's fixture just from constricting in such a small room.
The mans wife called 911, by the time I got called over to "remove" the snake they had already shot the snake 6 times throughout his head and upper body. The snake lay in the backyard by the time I got there, still alive. I called a local vet to come out and properly euthanise the animal.
down one beautiful snake, up one very ignorant man.
This story and others is why large boids have such a "bad rap". They are not "bad" animals. But they are natural animals and deserve to be treated as such. And I find it so very appoling when things like this happen because of human ignorance.
Rusty

That's terrible! And from what I understand, a good dose of cold water will normally stop a large constrictor from continuing to constrict. It's certainly easier and safer to try than shooting the poor thing.