Are ball pythons a domesticated species?

Since the idea of domestication is a social construct, it is important to look at varying definitions of the term. Here is a definition of domestication you might use for an in depth study of the anthropology of pet ownership or inter-species interactions:

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Originally Posted by Freakie_frog

According to evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond, animal species must meet six criteria in order to be considered for domestication:
1. Flexible diet — Creatures that are willing to consume a wide variety of food sources and can live off less cumulative food from the food pyramid (such as corn or wheat) are less expensive to keep in captivity. Carnivores by their very nature only feed on meat, which requires the expenditure of many animals.
2. Reasonably fast growth rate — Fast maturity rate compared to the human life span allows breeding intervention and makes the animal useful within an acceptable duration of caretaking. Large animals such as elephants require many years before they reach a useful size.
3. Ability to be bred in captivity — Creatures that are reluctant to breed when kept in captivity do not produce useful offspring, and instead are limited to capture in their wild state. Creatures such as the panda, antelope and giant forest hogs are territorial when breeding and cannot be maintained in crowded enclosures in captivity.
4. Pleasant disposition — Large creatures that are aggressive toward humans are dangerous to keep in captivity. The African buffalo has an unpredictable nature and is highly dangerous to humans. Although similar to domesticated pigs in many ways, American peccaries and Africa's warthogs and bushpigs are also dangerous in captivity.
5. Temperament which makes it unlikely to panic — A creature with a nervous disposition is difficult to keep in captivity as they will attempt to flee whenever they are startled. The gazelle is very flighty and it has a powerful leap that allows it to escape an enclosed pen. Some animals, such as Domestic sheep, still have a strong tendency to panic when their flight zone is crossed. However, most sheep also show a flocking instinct, whereby they stay close together when pressed. Livestock with such an instinct may be herded by people and dogs.
6. Modifiable social hierarchy — Social creatures that recognize a hierarchy of dominance can be raised to recognize a human as the pack leader.

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(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/domesticated) Here is a general definition, much more simplified:

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do⋅mes⋅ti⋅cate
   /dəˈmɛstɪˌkeɪt/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [duh-mes-ti-keyt] Show IPA Pronunciation
verb, -cat⋅ed, -cat⋅ing.
–verb (used with object)
1. to convert (animals, plants, etc.) to domestic uses; tame.
2. to tame (an animal), esp. by generations of breeding, to live in close association with human beings as a pet or work animal and usually creating a dependency so that the animal loses its ability to live in the wild.
3. to adapt (a plant) so as to be cultivated by and beneficial to human beings.
4. to accustom to household life or affairs.
5. to take (something foreign, unfamiliar, etc.) for one's own use or purposes; adopt.
6. to make more ordinary, familiar, acceptable, or the like: to domesticate radical ideas.

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Sure if you want to really argue that snakes are not pets because of 6 on the first list, go ahead. I would argue that the first definition is an over-analysis of the term. This is because people have been arguing that because of this definition, cats might not be considered domestic animals. There may be a spectrum between wild and domestic, but I don't think that is really important right now. I really do not believe that cats are wild animals, and if so, please point me to the first zoo that has a house-cat on display or where I could go to see this spectacle in its natural environment.

By looking at a definition from the dictionary, I would argue that snakes are indeed domesticated. This may not be true of ball-pythons, but I think snakes that are aggressive by nature will fit into this category. I would like to think that you can tame a snake. I'm assuming that the giant snake industry would be a lot less appealing if every retic or burm was as vicious as it was as a hatchling or as it's wild counterpart. Snakes also live in close associations with humans. Humans control the environments and diets.

There is no right or wrong here because you have to remember, domestic is not even real. Domestic is a word made up by humans to describe an occurrence in nature. There is no real domestication because we only perceive certain actions as domesticating or domestication. Snakes don't seem to care whether they are domestic or not. I don't think we should care too much either. :)

My idea of domestication is creating a new species through human contact that is beneficial to humans.
2 or 3 generations is not domesticated. I wouldn't consider anything other than 60-80 generations to be domesticated.

Cows, Pigs, Cats, Dogs, and even some Horses have been altered from their original wild ancestors, over hundreds of years for human benefit.
You wouldn't be able to find a naturally born and bred generation of black and white dairy cows in the wild that wasn't released by a human at some point. Wild pigs are VERY different from domesticated pigs.
Dogs even have a multitude of influenced breeds, when it really all originated with coyotes and wolves. (And I don't mean by colors, like with morphs, because that's genetic and can occur over one generation, while actual structure takes many more.)

When people say 'wild cats' I don't really understand. There is no such thing as 'wild house cats'. They are loose domesticated cats.

So no, I don't think snakes will ever be able to be domesticated, because we really have no benefit out of them other than pets, and even then they aren't very beneficial because they have such little intelligence.
I think parrots could be eventually, but it would take a lot of time. They are intelligent but I would think it to be harder than with mammals for some reason. I don't have any facts behind that, just a hunch.

WOW

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Originally Posted by MarkS

I don't see that at all in many animals that have long been considered to be 'domesticated' Even a quick glance at most poultry will show that many of the ducks, geese or turkeys are NOT significantly different then their wild counterparts. In some cases, not even the paint job is different. The only difference being that some of them are living in the wild, and some of them are living in farmyards... Physically, many of them are identical.

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Ducks, geese, and turkey are like ball pythons, very easy to keep. The ones that are signifigantly altered from their wild counterparts are domestic the others are not. If you do a little research you will find that domestic poultry is different than their wild counterparts. Domestic ducks for instance are larger and the males and females look much more alike than wild ducks.

People who keep poultry will tell you that there is a difference and the differences are examples of domestication.

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Originally Posted by MarkS

Actually, animals are NOT wild until proven otherwise... I think that the main criteria should be WHERE THEY ARE FOUND IN THE FIRST PLACE....... I tend to think of animals FOUND in the wild as wild animals, however I tend to think of animals FOUND in my basement where I have been breeding, feeding and caring for them through many generations to NOT be wild animals.

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This is just silly. If you truely believe that a tiger in a zoo is domestic than we should just not talk about this anymore.

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Originally Posted by MarkS

I've re-read my posts, and I don't see where you can even make the assumptions that you are. No, I DON'T 'really disagree with the assertion that they are not domestic' at all. That's YOUR preconceived notions that are coloring your comments. I've merely been questioning why people have been SO adamant that their snakes are wild animals. It seems to me that the main reason people have been putting forth the argument that ball pythons are NOT domesticated, is because they don't WANT them to be domesticated and for no other reason. I have not heard a reasonable argument on EITHER side of the argument about why they either should or should not be considered domesticated. Personally I would rather not label them either way until I have a more thorough understanding of what 'domestication' actually is.......

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I have to agree with ZinniaZ on this one. There have been many great reasons given why they are not domestic. Since you are arguing the reasons point by point I am not sure how you can say there aren't. I will concede that I am assuming that you believe they are domestic and that procncieved notion is coloring my arguments. I apologize.

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Originally Posted by MarkS

And I would put forth that this IS a good reason to suspect that they are a domesticated species. You can NOT selectively breed wild animals. Wild animals will choose their own mates. Only a domesticated animal could be forced to mate with another that was not of it's own choosing.

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You can selectively breed wild animals. Its actually the process called domestication. Wild animals are bred in captivity all the time. Lions, tigers, and bears, will all breed in captivity and are not domestic, oh my.

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Originally Posted by MarkS

See my earlier statement on poultry. Many of the accepted 'domesticated' lines can not be differentiated from their wild counterparts. The only difference is in their upbringing. The only real difference between captive bred ball pythons and captive bred turkeys is that turkeys have been bred in captivity for a few hundred years longer. In any kind of evolutionary timeline, that's extremely insignificant.

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Once again domestication is not a black and white thing. There are signifigant difference between wild turkeys and domestic ones. Size, build and behavior are the important ones. The amount of time spent domesticating the animal is not the only factor to consider. The number of generations, number of offspring, and scale of the project are all very important. The number of BP born in captivity without introducing wild genetics is unbelievably minuscule when compared to the efforts to domesticate turkeys.

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Originally Posted by MarkS

Well, except for maybe cornsnakes, kingsnakes, and several dozen other species of colubrids that have been captive bred for over a dozen generations.

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Non of the snakes you mentioned differ any more from wild snakes than BPs. I think that the BP trait of balling as a defense mechanism helps their flimsy case for being accepted as domesticated.

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Originally Posted by Ssthisto

I am one of the people who would state (with certain caveats) that the royal pythons and corn snakes that are captive bred for multiple generations do qualify - or will qualify with further generations - for "domesticated" status.

Domestication criteria 1: Flexibility of Diet
Our captive-bred royal pythons are fed on a diet of commercially raised Mus musculus and Rattus norvegicus - both of which are foodstuffs that are easy to provide in captivity but are significantly NOT what Python regius is consuming in the wild. Selective breeding for ready consumption of easily obtainable foodstuffs meets the criteria of "flexible diet".
Domestication criteria 2: Reasonably Fast Growth Rate
Birth to ability to breed in a year - despite wild animals almost certainly taking longer to mature enough to successfully reproduce? I think that qualifies as a rapid growth rate, especially when compared to horses and other large hooved mammals that are considered domesticated.
Domestication criteria 3: Will Breed in Captivity
Well, I don't think it's possible to argue this one, no matter what Animal Rights groups might want to say about reptile keeping... there are multiple generations of captive-bred animals out there, and verifiably multiple-generation-captive-bred based on the visual mutations they display.
Domestication criteria 4: Pleasant Disposition
Royal pythons certainly have one of the nicest and most tractable temperaments of any snake I've ever worked with. You get the occasional biter, but generally they acclimatise well to handling... better than any domesticated Syrian hamster!
Domestication criteria 5: Unlikely to Panic
Again, this is a disposition thing - they may panic, but they don't bolt in such a way that they're liable to harm themselves or their handler; I wouldn't actually consider this a major criteria simply because many domesticated animals (pigeons, sheep, budgies, goldfish) also display panic behaviour on occasion.
Domestication criteria 6: Social Hierarchy
I don't believe this is a genuine domestication criteria. I don't think a domestic chicken thinks YOU are the head of the flock (especially if that chicken is living in a battery farm) any more than a goldfish sees you as the head of a shoal.

And one thing that the "criteria" on Wikipedia hasn't mentioned is the selective breeding for human-desirable traits OR the commercial usage of the species. We have done both of these things to royal pythons.

Now, I would say that WILD CAUGHT royal pythons absolutely are not domesticated - and until there are no further wild-caught bloodlines coming in, it is unlikely that there will be a scientifically described Python regius familiaris.

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These criteria are the criteria that should be used when considering domesticating a wild animal not really criteria to be classified as domesticated. For all of the reasons you list I would say that domestication of BP could be possible.

I disagree with your first point. Ball pythons primary food source is wild rodents and they do not suffer by eating them solely. I don't see any evidence that selective breeding has helped to change their diet in any way. Conditioning on a case by case basis certainly has been done and does help in many cases. Although I disagree with the assertion that BP have a flexible diet I would say that modern shipping and globalization has made a flexible diet much less necessary for domestication.

I also agree that recognizing a social hierarchy is not quite as important as the rest of the criteria.

Without the intervention of people most domesticated animals will revert back to the wild in just a few short generations. But if you take your favorite Ball Python back to Africa and release it, it would do just fine. We have not altered their basic needs or their anatomy in any way whatsoever. Not domestic.

domesticated
Also found in: Encyclopedia, Wikipedia
do·mes·ti·cate (d-mst-kt)
tr.v. do·mes·ti·cat·ed, do·mes·ti·cat·ing, do·mes·ti·cates
1. To cause to feel comfortable at home; make domestic.
2. To adopt or make fit for domestic use or life.
3.
a. To train or adapt (an animal or plant) to live in a human environment and be of use to humans.
b. To introduce and accustom (an animal or plant) into another region; naturalize.
4. To bring down to the level of the ordinary person.
n. (-kt, -kt)
A plant or animal that has been adapted to live in a human environment.


the bolded key terms leads me to say no. We havnt made BP's useful to us besides companionship. its not like a hoarse that you use to pull your buggy or ride. and as far as adapting it to live in a human environment. this criteria has not been met either they still require there own micro habitat to live comfortably and stress free. you don't come home from work with your BP Chilling on the couch and using a litter box to defecate. no does it sleef by your feet in your bed. id say its pretty prone to needing a natural replica habitat.

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Originally Posted by blackcrystal22

So no, I don't think snakes will ever be able to be domesticated, because we really have no benefit out of them other than pets, and even then they aren't very beneficial because they have such little intelligence.

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You could say the same of domestic canaries, hamsters and other small pet animals - they are of no use to humans except for entertainment/pets, cannot be used easily for food or to obtain food ... but they've been selectively bred to show traits that are of interest to humans.

And a "green" Serinus canaria domestica canary is pretty indistinguishable from a wild Serinus canaria.

That said, I could see Burmese pythons being bred for meat and domesticated to that purpose - royal clutch sizes are just too small to make them practical meat animals.

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Originally Posted by Egapal

I disagree with your first point. Ball pythons primary food source is wild rodents and they do not suffer by eating them solely.

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Neither does a domestic cat suffer from eating a diet solely composed of wild rodents or birds (and in fact they benefit from eating a whole-prey diet, kibble is not the best diet for a cat) - the fact that they CAN survive on the wild diet is not the point. Of course a many-generations-captive-bred royal python would survive very well on a diet of jerboas, multimammates and other similar African rodents.

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I don't see any evidence that selective breeding has helped to change their diet in any way. Conditioning on a case by case basis certainly has been done and does help in many cases. Although I disagree with the assertion that BP have a flexible diet I would say that modern shipping and globalization has made a flexible diet much less necessary for domestication.

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If breeders (intentionally or otherwise) select royal pythons that are willing to eat domesticated, defrostedrodents (mice and rats) instead of insisting on live African rodents like Multimammates (their natural diet) as their breeding stock, then that is a form of selective breeding to accept a specific diet. I certainly won't be breeding animals that won't take domestic rodents as prey and I won't be perpetuating offspring that won't either.

This has been done with certain lines of cornsnakes - selecting the offspring that are willing to accept mouse pinks instead of insisting on the wild hatchling diet of anolis lizards.

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Originally Posted by JeffJ

the bolded key terms leads me to say no. We havnt made BP's useful to us besides companionship. its not like a hoarse that you use to pull your buggy or ride. and as far as adapting it to live in a human environment. this criteria has not been met either they still require there own micro habitat to live comfortably and stress free. you don't come home from work with your BP Chilling on the couch and using a litter box to defecate. no does it sleef by your feet in your bed. id say its pretty prone to needing a natural replica habitat.

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Canaries are of no practical use except as novelty pets, but they are domestic animals.
Hamsters require their own microhabitats in order to live comfortably, but they're also domestic animals.

Royal pythons are useful to humans in one major way - people are breeding novelty mutations and selling them for money. Whether the end user is a pet keeper or someone who's trying to collect enough blue-eyed leucistics to make a solid white snakeskin coat, there is a sound "use" for propogating these reptiles.

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Originally Posted by Ssthisto

You could say the same of domestic canaries, hamsters and other small pet animals - they are of no use to humans except for entertainment/pets, cannot be used easily for food or to obtain food ... but they've been selectively bred to show traits that are of interest to humans.

And a "green" Serinus canaria domestica canary is pretty indistinguishable from a wild Serinus canaria.

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Pet does not equal domestic. Many wild animals are kept as pets. I would not consider canaries domestic unless they were signifgantly different than wild canaries.

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Originally Posted by Ssthisto

That said, I could see Burmese pythons being bred for meat and domesticated to that purpose - royal clutch sizes are just too small to make them practical meat animals.

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Carnivors are not pratical as meat animals as it will always be more practical to raise the carnivors prey for its meat. They could only ever be a novelty meat for that reason and thus never be domesticated for that reason.

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Originally Posted by Ssthisto

Neither does a domestic cat suffer from eating a diet solely composed of wild rodents or birds (and in fact they benefit from eating a whole-prey diet, kibble is not the best diet for a cat) - the fact that they CAN survive on the wild diet is not the point. Of course a many-generations-captive-bred royal python would survive very well on a diet of jerboas, multimammates and other similar African rodents.

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The point I am trying to make is that they can not survive on anything but a wild diet. Ball Pythons eat rodents in the wild and we provide them with rodents in captivity. Cats eat rodents in the wild and we feed them kibble in captivity. When your Ball Python willingly eats a mouse substitute I will concede that its domestic.

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Originally Posted by Ssthisto

If breeders (intentionally or otherwise) select royal pythons that are willing to eat domesticated, defrostedrodents (mice and rats) instead of insisting on live African rodents like Multimammates (their natural diet) as their breeding stock, then that is a form of selective breeding to accept a specific diet. I certainly won't be breeding animals that won't take domestic rodents as prey and I won't be perpetuating offspring that won't either.

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Ok hold up. Captively bred and hatched ball pythons routinely refuse F/T rodents and wild caught ball pythons can be enticed to eat F/T rodents. Selective breeding has not been shown to help this one bit. Conditioning has been shown to help and the ability to condition and animal is not proof that its domestic.

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Originally Posted by Ssthisto

This has been done with certain lines of cornsnakes - selecting the offspring that are willing to accept mouse pinks instead of insisting on the wild hatchling diet of anolis lizards.

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The success of this breeding is debatable and diet is not the only reason I consider snakes of any kind to wild.

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Originally Posted by Ssthisto

Canaries are of no practical use except as novelty pets, but they are domestic animals.
Hamsters require their own microhabitats in order to live comfortably, but they're also domestic animals.

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Again there are more than one criteria for domestication. If these animals are not significantly different from their wild counterparts then I would not concede that they are domesticated. They are pets.

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Originally Posted by Ssthisto

Royal pythons are useful to humans in one major way - people are breeding novelty mutations and selling them for money. Whether the end user is a pet keeper or someone who's trying to collect enough blue-eyed leucistics to make a solid white snakeskin coat, there is a sound "use" for propogating these reptiles.

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All proof they are pets, this is not sound reasoning for them being domesticated. We have not altered the Ball Python to make them useful. We have selected the colors we like and that's it. Domestication is much much more than this. When humans selectively breed an albino tiger that does not make that tiger domestic. That makes it a selectively bred wild animal.

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Originally Posted by Ssthisto

You could say the same of domestic canaries, hamsters and other small pet animals - they are of no use to humans except for entertainment/pets, cannot be used easily for food or to obtain food ... but they've been selectively bred to show traits that are of interest to humans.

And a "green" Serinus canaria domestica canary is pretty indistinguishable from a wild Serinus canaria.

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Your severely confusing what I said.
Selective breeding is not domesticating over two generations to get a green canary that is only genetically different through a few generations, where it is physically identical.
Changing a wolf to a poodle is domestication, which takes hundreds of years and generations. But not just changing the physical appearance, but the way they act around humans. If an animal will come to the door to greet you with excitement for reasons other than food and water, I think that is important in domestication as well.
I have horses greet me, my cat and dog greet me, and I've seen small pigs greet their owners.

I don't think there are any 'domesticated hamsters', because most of them are identical to their wild ancestors. Generations with mice are a bit different because they breed at such an incredibly fast rate, they can be altered easier through selective breeding.
However, I don't think anyone can show me a 'mini mouse with curly hair' or a mouse that isn't the same as a field mouse with a different color.
Colors do not change the breed of animal, which is domestication in my book.

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Originally Posted by Egapal

Pet does not equal domestic. Many wild animals are kept as pets. I would not consider canaries domestic unless they were signifgantly different than wild canaries.

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Canaries have been selectively bred since the 1600s - for song ability, for posture, for colouration, for feather structure. More crucially, the domestic canary has been designated its own subspecies.

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The point I am trying to make is that they can not survive on anything but a wild diet. Ball Pythons eat rodents in the wild and we provide them with rodents in captivity. Cats eat rodents in the wild and we feed them kibble in captivity. When your Ball Python willingly eats a mouse substitute I will concede that its domestic.

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Snake steak sausages? That's a "mouse substitute" and doesn't even have any rodent content! If I could source them I would certainly have a go at feeding them to my royals, though I would not feed it as an exclusive diet... any more than I would feed my cats exclusively on kibble.

For that matter, I would argue that the diet we provide them now is a "substitute" for their actual diet - they don't see Mus musculus or Rattus norvegicus in the wild, they're eating Praomys natalensis and other AFRICAN rodents. I know from keeping all three rodent species that Natal rats do not look like domestic mice or rats, they do not behave like domestic mice or rats, they do not move like domestic mice or rats, they do not smell like domestic mice or rats and they almost certainly don't taste like them either (not that I have a basis for comparison - I haven't tried eating any of the three.)

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Originally Posted by blackcrystal22

Your severely confusing what I said.
Selective breeding is not domesticating over two generations to get a green canary that is only genetically different through a few generations, where it is physically identical.

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Canaries are four hundred years into domestication. A lot more than four generations. The greens are the ones that tend to have been selectively bred for song ability - the best singers were chosen instead of picking the ones with weird feathers or the ones with weird postures or the ones with odd colouring.

[quote]If an animal will come to the door to greet you with excitement for reasons other than food and water, I think that is important in domestication as well.[quote]
Do battery hens greet their owner?
What about range-bred, range-fed, range-reared cattle?

They're both domesticated species but they are quite often frightened of humans.

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I don't think there are any 'domesticated hamsters', because most of them are identical to their wild ancestors. Generations with mice are a bit different because they breed at such an incredibly fast rate, they can be altered easier through selective breeding.
However, I don't think anyone can show me a 'mini mouse with curly hair' or a mouse that isn't the same as a field mouse with a different color.
Colors do not change the breed of animal, which is domestication in my book.

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Actually, wild Syrian hamsters do not look exactly like the selectively bred odd-coloured, very large animals humans have bred in several different coat types (including long haired angoras, curly rexes, hairless and satin-coated).

I could certainly show you curly-haired mice - rex and double rex. I could also show you long-coats that look like hamsters with long tails, satin-coats that are metallic and shiny and even texels (Satin longcoat rex). Hairless? Yup. And the English show mouse (particularly the pink-eyed white) is double the size of your average wild Mus musculus - and has been type bred for very large ears, a long tail and a specific body shape.

Same goes for rats - rex, hairless and satin coats; wildtype top-eared or the odd ear set of a dumbo, dozens of colour combinations, even animals that have been bred for taillessness.

As I said, royal pythons are on their way to being domesticated and already fit quite a few of the criteria - and they won't be considered truly domesticated until there are no more wild stocks being brought in - once they've been bred exclusively in captivity for a few generations they may well be assigned a new subspecies name - Python regius familiaris, anyone?

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Originally Posted by Ssthisto

Canaries have been selectively bred since the 1600s - for song ability, for posture, for colouration, for feather structure. More crucially, the domestic canary has been designated its own subspecies.

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or

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Originally Posted by Ssthisto

And a "green" Serinus canaria domestica canary is pretty indistinguishable from a wild Serinus canaria.

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You can not have it both ways. I don't know anything about canaries but you have to pick one. If the domestic canary is different than the wild ones then sure its domestic. How can they be a subspecies and be indistinguishable from a wild canary. Again how they look is not really the issue.

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Originally Posted by Ssthisto

Snake steak sausages? That's a "mouse substitute" and doesn't even have any rodent content! If I could source them I would certainly have a go at feeding them to my royals, though I would not feed it as an exclusive diet... any more than I would feed my cats exclusively on kibble.

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This is one of the worst points I have seen made yet. I am pretty sure I would fail at getting hard numbers but generally speaking here is why snake steak sausages is complete irrelevent to the conversation. Almost everyone who keeps snakes feeds rodents with a hand full of fringe people trying to feed snake steak sausages. Almost everyone who keeps cats feeds kibble with only a small fringe group feeding live, f/t or pre-killed prey.

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Originally Posted by Ssthisto

For that matter, I would argue that the diet we provide them now is a "substitute" for their actual diet - they don't see Mus musculus or Rattus norvegicus in the wild, they're eating Praomys natalensis and other AFRICAN rodents. I know from keeping all three rodent species that Natal rats do not look like domestic mice or rats, they do not behave like domestic mice or rats, they do not move like domestic mice or rats, they do not smell like domestic mice or rats and they almost certainly don't taste like them either (not that I have a basis for comparison - I haven't tried eating any of the three.)

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Are you seriously trying to say that feeding common mice or rats vs african rodents to BP's is analogous to feeding kibble vs prey to cats? The point is that you do not need to simulate a domestic animals natural diet. They are domestic. They eat what we have domesticated them to eat. Convincing a snake to eat a rodent around 1% genetically different from the rodents it gets in nature does not constitute a breakthrough in domestication of snakes. A wild ball python would eat a common rat if one wondered by. In fact they do. Wild ball pythons are reutinely fed common rats. Are you saying there is no wild ball python species? All ball pythons are domestic?

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Originally Posted by Ssthisto

Actually, wild Syrian hamsters do not look exactly like the selectively bred odd-coloured, very large animals humans have bred in several different coat types (including long haired angoras, curly rexes, hairless and satin-coated).

I could certainly show you curly-haired mice - rex and double rex. I could also show you long-coats that look like hamsters with long tails, satin-coats that are metallic and shiny and even texels (Satin longcoat rex). Hairless? Yup. And the English show mouse (particularly the pink-eyed white) is double the size of your average wild Mus musculus - and has been type bred for very large ears, a long tail and a specific body shape.

Same goes for rats - rex, hairless and satin coats; wildtype top-eared or the odd ear set of a dumbo, dozens of colour combinations, even animals that have been bred for taillessness.

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You are seriously missing the points being made and arguing other points. The point everyone who believes ball pythons are wild is trying to make is that cosmetic differences that can be achieved in a few generations is not an indication of domestication where as hundreds of generations of selective breeding and classification by the scientific community as a sub species is an indicator.

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Originally Posted by Ssthisto

As I said, royal pythons are on their way to being domesticated and already fit quite a few of the criteria - and they won't be considered truly domesticated until there are no more wild stocks being brought in - once they've been bred exclusively in captivity for a few generations they may well be assigned a new subspecies name - Python regius familiaris, anyone?

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I will stipulate that if we stopped introducing wild snakes to the breeding population and we could manage to change them significantly in the next 200 or more years then sure they are domestic. It takes considerably more than a few generations to be classified as a new species let alone a domestic species. But as for the question "Re: Are ball pythons a domesticated species?" well.....Not even close.

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Originally Posted by Egapal

You can not have it both ways. I don't know anything about canaries but you have to pick one. If the domestic canary is different than the wild ones then sure its domestic. How can they be a subspecies and be indistinguishable from a wild canary. Again how they look is not really the issue.

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A hairless silver fawn dumbo rat is very easily distinguishable from a wild rat and nobody would ever assume that they are anything other than domesticated. An agouti show-bred rat, at first glimpse, looks indistinguishable from a wild rat - the bucket test, unless you're a rat fancier, wouldn't let you pick the wild one from the domestic one. The agouti rat can quite easily be the OFFSPRING of that hairless silver fawn dumbo (breed to a top-eared blue, mink, chocolate, black or agouti normal-coat)... both are still domesticated rats.

A green singer canary doesn't LOOK different to a wild canary - but the song is significantly different. Green singers are a variety of the domesticated subspecies that just happens to resemble the original wildtype in certain aspects (it hasn't been bred for colour or posture traits, ONLY for song.) I personally couldn't pick out a green singer domesticated bird from an aviary containing singers and wild Serins... but I bet someone who's a canary fancier could.

A Violet Pied English show budgie doesn't look that much like a wild Australian Undulated Grasskeet... but they're both Melopsittacus undulatus, and a captive-bred domesticated budgie that has come from an outcrossed line will be visually similar to the wild type.

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This is one of the worst points I have seen made yet. I am pretty sure I would fail at getting hard numbers but generally speaking here is why snake steak sausages is complete irrelevent to the conversation. Almost everyone who keeps snakes feeds rodents with a hand full of fringe people trying to feed snake steak sausages. Almost everyone who keeps cats feeds kibble with only a small fringe group feeding live, f/t or pre-killed prey.

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Actually, most people worldwide who keep cats probably have cats that live off of the mice and birds they kill... because the vast majority of "kept" cats are not cats confined to houses, they're barn and working cats or just plain cats that have access to the outdoors. My cats catch, kill and eat wild rats and mice (and my occasional escapees!), but they are also provided with kibble. Just because they always have a bowl of kibble available to them doesn't mean they don't want the biologically appropriate diet!

But the fact that some snakes DO take the artificial processed foods indicates that it's possible to feed them that way. Heck, I've got a baby albino royal who wouldn't eat on her own until I provided her with a strip of raw chicken thigh. After that she was quite happy to eat the mice and rats I WANTED her eating.

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Are you seriously trying to say that feeding common mice or rats vs african rodents to BP's is analogous to feeding kibble vs prey to cats?

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Yes, I am. It's an artificial diet based on its convenience to humans; if they required a strictly biologically appropriate diet they would be much harder to convert to domesticated easily obtainable defrosted rodent prey. Compare to something like a mock viper, which does NOT convert to readily available prey items, not even when several generations captive bred. They demand the species of geckos they eat in the wild.

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The point is that you do not need to simulate a domestic animals natural diet. They are domestic. They eat what we have domesticated them to eat.

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So feeding an obligate carnivore a diet based on grain makes it domesticated?

Just because a cat or dog can survive on a kibble made out of corn (and please keep in mind kibbled foods have only been around for the last century or so - the animals in question were domesticated thousands of years prior eating their own NATURAL diet... mice and birds for cats, carrion and scavenged table scraps as well as hunted prey for dogs) doesn't mean that they are adapted to eat it nor that it's good for them to eat it.

If a domesticated animal didn't need to be fed its natural diet, why can't people keep cats alive on a vegan diet, or feed dogs on, say, mashed potatoes? For that matter, why do rabbit keepers suggest you let your rabbit graze for its health, why are free-range chickens that eat seeds, bugs and plants healthier and tastier than battery farmed ones and why do dogs that get a raw-bones diet have fewer dental problems and less obesity than kibble-fed ones?

Conversely, my "wild" royal pythons will eat rodents that don't resemble anything they'd ever see in the wild (and the next time I see someone say "they eat gerbils" I am going to scream at my computer... no, they aren't making the thousands-of-miles trek to Mongolia to eat pet-trade gerbils!) that are fed on diets composed in part of *surprise surprise* kibbled pet food.

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Convincing a snake to eat a rodent around 1% genetically different from the rodents it gets in nature does not constitute a breakthrough in domestication of snakes. A wild ball python would eat a common rat if one wondered by. In fact they do.

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My captive-farmed adult male didn't recognise domesticated rats as prey. He was quite clearly hungry, but unless you offered him a Multimammate rat (which are genetically much further from domestic rats and mice than one percent - chimpanzees are as close to being humans as multis are to being rats) he would not take the prey. It took quite a bit of doing to convert him to the readily-available prey.

On the other hand, my captive-bred babies from Bob Clark were not interested in the multimammates at all - they wanted the rats they'd been raised on.

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Wild ball pythons are reutinely fed common rats. Are you saying there is no wild ball python species? All ball pythons are domestic?

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Nope, no more than I am saying that tigers are domesticated - just because it'll eat "artificial" food doesn't mean it IS domesticated (wild fox in my garden quite happily eats cat food; wild birds eat imported milletseed, and so on) any more than eating a biologically appropriate (if not geographically appropriate) diet makes them NOT domesticated. But I am saying that royal pythons have the POTENTIAL to be domesticated, they meet many of the criteria already, and with a few generations of captive breeding under their belts WITHOUT input from wild populations, we'll be well on our way to having domesticated Python regius familiaris.

[QUOTE=Ssthisto;983372]A hairless silver fawn dumbo rat is very easily distinguishable from a wild rat and nobody would ever assume that they are anything other than domesticated. An agouti show-bred rat, at first glimpse, looks indistinguishable from a wild rat - the bucket test, unless you're a rat fancier, wouldn't let you pick the wild one from the domestic one. The agouti rat can quite easily be the OFFSPRING of that hairless silver fawn dumbo (breed to a top-eared blue, mink, chocolate, black or agouti normal-coat)... both are still domesticated rats.

A green singer canary doesn't LOOK different to a wild canary - but the song is significantly different. Green singers are a variety of the domesticated subspecies that just happens to resemble the original wildtype in certain aspects (it hasn't been bred for colour or posture traits, ONLY for song.) I personally couldn't pick out a green singer domesticated bird from an aviary containing singers and wild Serins... but I bet someone who's a canary fancier could.

A Violet Pied English show budgie doesn't look that much like a wild Australian Undulated Grasskeet... but they're both Melopsittacus undulatus, and a captive-bred domesticated budgie that has come from an outcrossed line will be visually similar to the wild type.

I have no idea what your point is. I don't care what the animal looks like. Can't say it any other way. You are hammering one point to death and poorly at that. If an animal is altered from the wild type significantly than that fact could be used along with others as a case for being classified domestic. Ball pythons have not been signifigantly altered from the wild type and therefore I don't understand why you insist on making all of the irrelevant points above.


[QUOTE=Ssthisto;983372]Actually, most people worldwide who keep cats probably have cats that live off of the mice and birds they kill... because the vast majority of "kept" cats are not cats confined to houses, they're barn and working cats or just plain cats that have access to the outdoors. My cats catch, kill and eat wild rats and mice (and my occasional escapees!), but they are also provided with kibble. Just because they always have a bowl of kibble available to them doesn't mean they don't want the biologically appropriate diet!

I personally do not believe that cats are truly domesticated for the above reasons. I really don't understand what point you are trying to make. If you could make a statement and then we could discuss that it would be great. My point has from the beginning been that snakes do not have a flexible diet. You claimed the fact that bp eat common mice and rats as an example they do, I disagreed, you brought up snake sausages, I disagreed with the whole idea that could refute my initial statement and now you are going on about what cats eat. Snakes do not have a flexible diet.

[QUOTE=Ssthisto;983372]But the fact that some snakes DO take the artificial processed foods indicates that it's possible to feed them that way. Heck, I've got a baby albino royal who wouldn't eat on her own until I provided her with a strip of raw chicken thigh. After that she was quite happy to eat the mice and rats I WANTED her eating.

Snakes do not normally take artificial processed food. You can not use rare examples to make a point about the classification of a species. The fact that Ball Pythons are finicky eaters is alone proof they are not domestic. The whole point of the flexible diet is that in order to domesticate an animal its must be easy to feed. BPs are not easy to feed when compared to domestic animals.

[QUOTE=Ssthisto;983372]Yes, I am. It's an artificial diet based on its convenience to humans; if they required a strictly biologically appropriate diet they would be much harder to convert to domesticated easily obtainable defrosted rodent prey. Compare to something like a mock viper, which does NOT convert to readily available prey items, not even when several generations captive bred. They demand the species of geckos they eat in the wild.

Well I guess we will have to just disagree. In fact I disagree with your above comparison. BP eat rodents in the wild. Feeding them rodents in captivity is not an artificial diet. It is strictly biologically appropriate. I can not believe you are now comparing the differences between common rodents and african rodents to the differences between rodents and geckos. What makes your point so much more rediculious is that BP do not readily eat anything. They are notorious for not eating at the drop of a hat.


[QUOTE=Ssthisto;983372]So feeding an obligate carnivore a diet based on grain makes it domesticated?

Just because a cat or dog can survive on a kibble made out of corn (and please keep in mind kibbled foods have only been around for the last century or so - the animals in question were domesticated thousands of years prior eating their own NATURAL diet... mice and birds for cats, carrion and scavenged table scraps as well as hunted prey for dogs) doesn't mean that they are adapted to eat it nor that it's good for them to eat it.

Again I do not concede cats to be domesticated and dogs will eat what humans eat. What they eat does not alone make them domestic. I never said it did. It is one trait among many.

[QUOTE=Ssthisto;983372]If a domesticated animal didn't need to be fed its natural diet, why can't people keep cats alive on a vegan diet, or feed dogs on, say, mashed potatoes? For that matter, why do rabbit keepers suggest you let your rabbit graze for its health, why are free-range chickens that eat seeds, bugs and plants healthier and tastier than battery farmed ones and why do dogs that get a raw-bones diet have fewer dental problems and less obesity than kibble-fed ones?

All of this is irrelevant. What is best for the animal has virtually never been considered when it comes to domestication. Non of the above points have anything to do with BPs.

[QUOTE=Ssthisto;983372]Conversely, my "wild" royal pythons will eat rodents that don't resemble anything they'd ever see in the wild (and the next time I see someone say "they eat gerbils" I am going to scream at my computer... no, they aren't making the thousands-of-miles trek to Mongolia to eat pet-trade gerbils!) that are fed on diets composed in part of *surprise surprise* kibbled pet food.

We disagree on the definition of "resemble" as well. Wow you are very serious about using the appropriet terms. Does it bother you that I call my snake a ball python and not a royal python.


[QUOTE=Ssthisto;983372]My captive-farmed adult male didn't recognise domesticated rats as prey. He was quite clearly hungry, but unless you offered him a Multimammate rat (which are genetically much further from domestic rats and mice than one percent - chimpanzees are as close to being humans as multis are to being rats) he would not take the prey. It took quite a bit of doing to convert him to the readily-available prey.

On the other hand, my captive-bred babies from Bob Clark were not interested in the multimammates at all - they wanted the rats they'd been raised on.

Not sure what point you are advancing here. I love the point about humans and chimps because I bet we disagree here as well. Humans are basically chimpanzees. We are genetically very very similiar. I would argue that an animal that ate sole humans in the wild would not be considered domestic just because it could be coaxed into eating chimpanzees. All of the stuff you said above also great reasons why BPs are not domestic.

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Originally Posted by Ssthisto

Nope, no more than I am saying that tigers are domesticated - just because it'll eat "artificial" food doesn't mean it IS domesticated (wild fox in my garden quite happily eats cat food; wild birds eat imported milletseed, and so on) any more than eating a biologically appropriate (if not geographically appropriate) diet makes them NOT domesticated. But I am saying that royal pythons have the POTENTIAL to be domesticated, they meet many of the criteria already, and with a few generations of captive breeding under their belts WITHOUT input from wild populations, we'll be well on our way to having domesticated Python regius familiaris.

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Well you say a few I say hundreds, I am going to go ahead and say we agree on this point.

You don't find these crazy morphs in the wild.

my own personal test for whether an animal is domesticated is this:

If you let it go and it comes back within a few days.....it's domesticated!
Very few animals are domesticated. Tame is not the same as domesticated in my mind. I think snakes probably don't even have the brain structure needed for true domestication.

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Originally Posted by _Venom_

You don't find these crazy morphs in the wild.

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Really? Where do you think all the base morphs were imported from?

I completely forgot about this thread.

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Originally Posted by _Venom_

You don't find these crazy morphs in the wild.

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Ohh thats right, I forgot about those mad scientists that genetically engineer designer ball pythons, because they obviously couldn't exist in the wild.

They way I see it is , If I let my cat out in the mourning he might be gone for the day maybe the night too. However soon enough i hear him making noise at the door. That to me is domestic he wants to come in to eat. Sure he could maybe live outside on his own but he wont, he'll come back. We have mousers in the barn also. They can come and go as they please but when I take food outside they are right there. Sure they stay where it's easy to get food, but even never having been in the house they don't leave. If I put my snakes out side in the mourning assuming I live some where they wouldn't freeze this time of year they would not come back or expect me to bring them food at night. They would hunt for it and never think twice about me, thats wild. Cats are 100% domestic to say they aren't doesn't make sense. If anyone who thinks other wise can come to idaho and take me in the woods and show me a tabby running around I'll dance everywhere I go for the rest of my live. Thats how I see it.

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Originally Posted by rabernet

Really? Where do you think all the base morphs were imported from?

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Originally Posted by TMoore

I completely forgot about this thread.



Ohh thats right, I forgot about those mad scientists that genetically engineer designer ball pythons, because they obviously couldn't exist in the wild.

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Not talking about basemorphs. :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by womensitdown

They way I see it is , If I let my cat out in the mourning he might be gone for the day maybe the night too. However soon enough i hear him making noise at the door. That to me is domestic he wants to come in to eat. Sure he could maybe live outside on his own but he wont, he'll come back. We have mousers in the barn also. They can come and go as they please but when I take food outside they are right there. Sure they stay where it's easy to get food, but even never having been in the house they don't leave. If I put my snakes out side in the mourning assuming I live some where they wouldn't freeze this time of year they would not come back or expect me to bring them food at night. They would hunt for it and never think twice about me, thats wild. Cats are 100% domestic to say they aren't doesn't make sense. If anyone who thinks other wise can come to idaho and take me in the woods and show me a tabby running around I'll dance everywhere I go for the rest of my live. Thats how I see it.

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If you want to get technical, cats arent domestic either. They have reasoning skills, and they are smart, thats why they come back where its easy to get food, They know how they are treated and whats "home".

:mad::P:snake:

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Originally Posted by _Venom_

Not talking about basemorphs. :rolleyes:

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My smiley faces are upside down!!!

:):(

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Originally Posted by Neal

If you want to get technical, cats arent domestic either. They have reasoning skills, and they are smart, thats why they come back where its easy to get food, They know how they are treated and whats "home".

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I think it's in the eyes of the beholder. I read this whole thread last night and I still think snakes are wild and cats and dogs (although descendants of wild animals) are domestic, and even though there are a lot of good points (along with lots of B.S. that doesn't really have anything to do with anything) my minds not changed.

Yes it is the eye of the beholder, but neither of the 3 are domesticated species, they are tame, docile, and cats & dogs are smarter then snakes, which is why people think that they are domesticated.

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Originally Posted by Neal

Yes it is the eye of the beholder, but neither of the 3 are domesticated species, they are tame, docile, and cats & dogs are smarter then snakes, which is why people think that they are domesticated.

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Well that makes a lot of sense to me. I guess I just figure that different breeds of cats and dogs aren't found in the wild, they are not wild, but I see what your gettin at.

Because they were human-portrayed, meaning we focused on making certain breeds of cats and dogs, by pinpointing traits, and breeding towards those traits, just as the same with snakes, certain morphs arent found in the wild, because 2 snakes we breed may not ever cross paths during the proper time, they may not win the female if more then 1 male is competing. It's all because we inverveined.

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Originally Posted by Neal

Because they were human-portrayed, meaning we focused on making certain breeds of cats and dogs, by pinpointing traits, and breeding towards those traits, just as the same with snakes, certain morphs arent found in the wild, because 2 snakes we breed may not ever cross paths during the proper time, they may not win the female if more then 1 male is competing. It's all because we inverveined.

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If cats and dogs aren't domesticated, then tell me what animal is?

Every definition fits cats and dogs, but not snakes.

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Originally Posted by blackcrystal22

If cats and dogs aren't domesticated, then tell me what animal is?

Every definition fits cats and dogs, but not snakes.

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a monkey.

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Originally Posted by ZinniaZ

So if you find a couple of baby foxes, they are domestic if you care for them feed them and breed them in your basement?

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um...yea.

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Originally Posted by azpythons

a monkey.

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Neal, you are acting as if domestication does not exist, because cats and dogs, horses, pigs, and cows are the roots of domestication.

Didn't you ever read Animal Farm?

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do⋅mes⋅ti⋅cate
   /dəˈmɛstɪˌkeɪt/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [duh-mes-ti-keyt] Show IPA verb, -cat⋅ed, -cat⋅ing.
–verb (used with object)
1. to convert (animals, plants, etc.) to domestic uses; tame.
2. to tame (an animal), esp. by generations of breeding, to live in close association with human beings as a pet or work animal and usually creating a dependency so that the animal loses its ability to live in the wild.
3. to adapt (a plant) so as to be cultivated by and beneficial to human beings.
4. to accustom to household life or affairs.
5. to take (something foreign, unfamiliar, etc.) for one's own use or purposes; adopt.
6. to make more ordinary, familiar, acceptable, or the like: to domesticate radical ideas.

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http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/domestication

Corn is a domesticated plant, and so are most of the fruits and vegetables that you eat. Those did not exist the same way before human beings did something to change it.

In my eyes, this definition explains that the animal or plant had to exist (as a species) because of human beings.

House cats have become their own species, yes some have been released, but they were created by humans.
How many milk cows and draft horses do you see in the wild?
How many poodle dogs do you see running around upper Canada and Alaska with the wolves and coyotes?

How many ball pythons do you see in the wild? :gj:

I vote no. Simply because, no one has, through the centuries, bred ball pythons to benefit the human race, taking into consideration the stock's temperament, suitability to a job, etc. Horses.. dogs.. they have been shaped and formed, through years of selective breeding, into what humans want. Muscular, cow-savvy quarter horses for cowboys. Sheep-savvy herding dogs. Poultry too is domesticated in my eyes; breeds such as the Rhode Island Red were developed with purposes in mind; some lines were bred for their table palatability; some for their astounding eggs; some, even multi-purpose birds.
My chickens are pretty wild; they return to the barn at night, and know where their food is; that is it. But they're not wild; they were shaped and formed by years of human selection in their breeding. Humans terrify them for no reason other than they were not coddled since hatching. So, no.. tame-ness is not how I judge an animal's domesticity. There are "wild" (feral) individual domestic animals (just check out some Thoroughbred race horses! But that's another post; aesthetics and athleticism before temperament.. not judging, just saying.) And "tame" human-imprinted native animals.
Long story short; in my book, a domestic animal's behavior, body type, etc. being molded through humans for centuries, makes it domesticated. And yes, its ability to recognise human benefit in its (the animal's) life also; I don't see BPs ever doing this. Sure, they might bear a resemblance to people's breeding fish and other animals, for color alone.. but fish IMO are also not domesticated. It's a slippery slope though! People could argue, that, well, you can teach a fish to come to the top of the tank to eat.. but still. Either I am making sense, or you'll quote me on it!

No, you are simply mis-understanding me. Do people consider them domesticated? Yes.

Cats, Dogs, Horses, Birds, Snakes all came from the wild, and were bred down generations. The reason people say dogs & cats are domesticated is because you can teach them things, that just simply means their smarter then snakes, you can't teach a snake where to poop and not to, as you can a dog or a cat. All of the animals originated in wildlife. If what you're saying applies, then that makes a lot of animals domesticated pets, and they're not. They were simply bred for temperment, just like some people breed snakes, and that goes back to what was said a few posts above, it's all in the eyes of the beholder, the reason I say no to domesticated is because if it comes down to it, it's all survival, you get your own. As long as any animal has that ability to think like that, I will not consider it domesticated.

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Originally Posted by Neal

No, you are simply mis-understanding me. Do people consider them domesticated? Yes.

Cats, Dogs, Horses, Birds, Snakes all came from the wild, and were bred down generations. The reason people say dogs & cats are domesticated is because you can teach them things, that just simply means their smarter then snakes, you can't teach a snake where to poop and not to, as you can a dog or a cat. All of the animals originated in wildlife.

If what you're saying applies, then that makes a lot of animals domesticated pets, and they're not. They were simply bred for temperment, just like some people breed snakes, and that goes back to what was said a few posts above, it's all in the eyes of the beholder, the reason I say no to domesticated is because if it comes down to it, it's all survival, you get your own. As long as any animal has that ability to think like that, I will not consider it domesticated.

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Your ideas for the history and definitions of domestication is extremely flawed at best. :confused:

If you can put it back into the wild and it continues to live as though you were never in its life then I'd say its pretty wild.

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Originally Posted by Bobsean

If you can put it back into the wild and it continues to live as though you were never in its life then I'd say its pretty wild.

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So what does that say about feral dogs and cats?

"A feral organism is one that has escaped from domestication and returned, partly or wholly, to its wild state."?

By that definition of feral(which is the only definition of feral), ball pythons could very well be domesticated, but able to thrive in the wild once released because they are capable of going feral.

P.S. I'm not arguing that ball pythons are domesticated, I don't consider them to be, but I was just enjoying pointing out flaws in arguments.. lol

lol, tu che, I agree. I don't think that this one has a real definitive answer.

Chickens are obviously domesticated, but they are the same species as the endangered Indian red jungle fowl. CITES defines "captive bred" specimens of any species as being at least the F2 generation born in captivity. Captive bred individuals are not subject to quotas or other international trade restrictions by CITES.

So by cities conventions any visible recessive morph would automatically be considered captive bred and not bound by their rules? You would need at least 2 generations of captive bred animals to reproduce a recessive.

homozygous/visual recessive morphs have been captured in the wild.

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Originally Posted by mainbutter

homozygous/visual recessive morphs have been captured in the wild.

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Of course they have. How else would we even know about them. What's your point?

Laws don't have to make sense. It's all in how it's interpreted by a judge.

every body is a downer ... i think they are, i leave mines in my room or let them sleep with me if i wake up n they r not near there under my stand so i dnt kno ... if ur snake roams ur house like mines, he doesnt run away he more chills or finds sumwhere to post ... let ur snake out more dont let the 20 galloner or 30 or wuteva b all it knows ... i mean i dont kno much of my ball pythons but lookin after them is teachin me alot about there OWN personality... corn snakes on the other hand ... i hate them i lost two of the rares ones kuz all they do is escape n leave forsure so .... yah

P.s.
my pitbull pup lets my snakes ride on her
so dig that

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Originally Posted by harm286

every body is a downer ... i think they are, i leave mines in my room or let them sleep with me if i wake up n they r not near there under my stand so i dnt kno ... if ur snake roams ur house like mines, he doesnt run away he more chills or finds sumwhere to post ... let ur snake out more dont let the 20 galloner or 30 or wuteva b all it knows ... i mean i dont kno much of my ball pythons but lookin after them is teachin me alot about there OWN personality... corn snakes on the other hand ... i hate them i lost two of the rares ones kuz all they do is escape n leave forsure so .... yah

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Originally Posted by harm286

P.s.
my pitbull pup lets my snakes ride on her
so dig that

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:weirdface

Hi,

Can I ask how you keep the temperatures he needs while he is free roaming? :confused:

Is it something you do only after they have finished digesting their meal in their enclosures for a couple of days?


dr del

OH DEF .... I let him out about 2 or three dayz after eating ...
note sumtimes diz is bad (they do poop)
and i have space heaters n pluz i stay in the basment so da tempt is really stable

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Originally Posted by harm286

OH DEF .... I let him out about 2 or three dayz after eating ...
note sumtimes diz is bad (they do poop)
and i have space heaters n pluz i stay in the basment so da tempt is really stable

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What about cool side and hot side? Also, unless your space heater only blows 92 degrees it is a terrible burn hazard to your snake. What about humidity? How do you keep your room at 50% humidity and 70% during shed. Not to mention do they know where to find water? I'm sorry to be bashing you but this is very dangerous.

Mine will never know what its like to live outside her cage. They are happy there. I take them out for about an hour, supervised, but they will never know the dangers of electrical outlets, falling off things, full blow heaters, and not being able to control how they regulate their temperatures. I'm not trying to be harsh, but it's like a child and owners have to be responsible.

I use a humidifier of course its diffcult to say wut i do but it works my floor in this corner where mojo jojo likes to b, if it gets hot stays around 65 to 70 its my tv stand ... My heater stays up on itz own stand, cords are tucked in of course and not on the floor ... N the heater u kan set up to blow every 25, 20,15 or ten minutes ....

And i dont leave them out for like 78494366 hours .... Just about 2 hours or if its wit me sleepin, about 8 hours ... No i take advice from u guys i listen .... But i promise i worrie about him 24/7 even now .... N i alwayz have to b there of course to let him roam n i dont try to leave him alone at all i am startin to get how temp humid. N light play a big facter in dere life