Keeping a ball python couple in the same cage?

I don't even keep my axolotls together for fear of spreading infections and the very minimal risk of them harming one another - it's just not worth it.

It makes it SO MUCH easier when someone gets sick, if there's multiple to a tank I have to guess if there's not any apparent signs.

Here is a good write up on the cannibalism people like to refer to. https://skiploder.wordpress.com/2015...e-world-maybe/ but here is the tldr version

Quote:

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Cohabitation does not kill these animals. Stress and starvation (energy stress) did.

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Can we also stop saying these are not social animals and in the same breath say they dominate or compete with each other. That is social behavior, which there appears to be no reason to assume they have much social behavior at all. They just simply pick the spot they feel is best and sit there, I see no reason to assume they give any thought to what else or who else is there. That can be reinforced by the reports of ball pythons being found together in holes the wild.

I would never recommend cohabitation with ball pythons, it is more expensive to do properly than housing 2 animals individually and has a few downsides that cannot be avoided. There isn't any advantage, so I see no reason to bother. It can be done, in my experience no most people do not have a proper set up when they do, do it. These people also claim they never have issues, which is true, you never have issues... until you have issues. when those issues arise the animals suffer and it's not fair to them when the issues could've been avoided.

At the same time, if someone chooses to provide a proper setup, educate themselves, and still cohabitate for whatever reason, I don't think they should be ridiculed like many choose to do also. While I find these people rare. Chances are they know more about what they are doing than you or I.

Generally speaking if you have to ask it means that you may not have the right experience to do so.

Can it be done? Yesc

Can everyone do it? No, people who have limited experience should concentrate on keeping a single animal to start with and meet proper husbandry requirements, it's easy yet some people still fail doing so therefore the last thing they need is to house two animal in an enclosure.

Are there any benefit of doing so? No

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Not really a Ball Python guy, but I've always thought the "transmitting diseases" reason against cohabitation was a bit overblown. For example, if there is an actual communicable disease in one animal the chances of that same disease being in the entire collection is VERY high in my opinion. This is why we do quarantines with new snakes (with all separate husbandry equipment).

But I don't know of anyone who has all separate husbandry equipment for each animal in their regular collection.

It's like with mites, if one snake has them then chances are good that all of your snakes have them.

I think that their are two of the reasons that one shouldn't do it that trump all the cannibalism worries and stress worries and that is unwanted or unknown breeding and inability to discern different sheds. The other one is just how annoying it would be to manage feedings.

A snake's shed is a great insight into how your setup is doing in terms of maintaining the health of your animal.

And breeding can be very detrimental to a snake if it keeps happening over and over with no break. Or if you don't know the snake is preggers you may not feed her enough etc etc.