Re: Do your Mojo's have an attitude?
I've heard from several people that lighter phase ball pythons have a more relaxed disposition and darker phase ball pythons have a more 'aggressive' disposition.
Personally I have a pastel female that will strike at anything that moves to quickly in front of her face.
With that being said...
I have a mojave female that hisses everytime I pick her up. She has yet to strike at me, but she sure does hiss like crazy when I touch her.
I also have a male mojave that has tagged me a few times. He just loves to eat is all. Once you get him out of his tub he's super laid back, but in the tub he's all business.
EDIT: Basically I think the lighter phase/darker phase statement is wrong. I think it depends on the animal and not necessarily their aggression, but how well their feeding response is.
Re: Do your Mojo's have an attitude?
As I've posted in other threads I think there is an inheritable aggression not tied to any morph that I've seen passed down through two different lines in my collection.
But that being said, I've also heard some interesting thoughts on cool incubation producing darker aggressive babies. The closest I've come to testing this was years ago when I gave a cornsnake egg to a coworker who lived in the mountains. His son wanted to watch an egg hatch so I fixed him up one with some substrate in a mason jar with a few small vent holes and told him to put it in the warmest place in the house, possibly over the refrigerator. The warmest place in my house is just fine for cornsnake eggs but perhaps where he lived it was on the extreme cool side. I forgot to keep track of when it should hatch but best I could figure later it might have been 3 months before he called me up wanting to get rid of the demon snake that hatched from his nice egg. It looked to be a genetic anerythristic which was possible for the clutch but it was very dark all over and extremely aggressive. Wish I had hung onto it to see if it outgrew either the color or the attitude.
My hissing chocolate mojave is of course much darker than her nice just mojave brother but in their case I would expect that is just a co-incidence since they where incubated in the same container.
Re: Do your Mojo's have an attitude?
When my fire was young he was a little doody. Would strike at the side of the tub when I passed and everything. But was a great feeder. Now hes around 500grams and is clam has struck at me in like 5months.
Re: Do your Mojo's have an attitude?
My male Mojave is the mellowest snake I've ever met. When people tell me they are afraid of snakes, he's the one I bust out for them to hold. I've had two people who are phobic of snakes get comfortable enough with him that they're capable of holding him without fear, and a third reached a point where she was petting him the last time I had him out for a social call. He's very steady and calm and SUPER-gentle, he's never even acted like he'd bite, certainly never hissed!
My Cinnamon male is a little pistol though! I never let my hook get too far from his tub, he's a snitty thing when it comes to getting him out and I try not to let anyone else even pet him, because honestly? He's struck at me a number of times and while I don't mind getting tagged (I consider it kharmic punishment for not avoiding the bite better, lol!) I do worry he'd put my friends off of snakes for life. XD That being said, I do love his attitude! He's ALWAYS out of his hide box, hunting...he's the most alert snake I've got, open his tub and he's looking RIGHT AT YOU, all s'd up and hissing! He makes me smile. :) I actually named him (yes I name all of my snakes, lol) after my favourite character from the tv show & subsequent movie, Firefly & Serenity...Jayne, after the character Jayne Cobb, who's kindof an adorable jerk. ;)
I guess the moral of this story is that I adore both my lighter and darker snakes, and while their personalities are night and day, I still love 'em. And am grateful that both are insanely good eaters!!! I ran out of rats for the Mojave and instead had a pair of large mice...he snatched one, constricted it, and while it was still clutched in his coils he suddenly shot halfway out of his tub, nabbed the second mouse from my hand (skip the lecture, I misplaced my tongs) and gulped it down while coiled around the first one...then hammered down the second one. XD
Re: Do your Mojo's have an attitude?
My mojo kinda has a suave twist to it. I think the girls like it!;)
Re: Do your Mojo's have an attitude?
My mojo is huffy and sometimes even bitey. I don't mess with him because it seems to stress him out when I mess with him. He is very shy and balls up a lot. I think the poor guy has anxiety issues :P