Do your Mojo's have an attitude?

I have a young male and a young female Mojave that both have terrible attitudes. They strike and hiss at me just about everytime I clean their cages. On the possitive side...they are both excellent feeders! Some of my other BP's can be a little vocal at times, but rarely if ever strike at me. I was just curious if this could be part of the Mojave genetics or if I just ended up with two angry Mojo's. Let me know your thoughts.

Thanks,

I don't know enough to call it genetic disposition but, I have a mojo who is a little over a year old and he is a hissy little bugger when I initiate contact with him. When I reach into his cage it almost never fails that he goes to hissing. He hasn't struck at me as of yet, but he's real vocal.

i have a male butter that hisses and strikes at me every time i open his cage......and only eats after 2am :O lol he is a trip

My mojo has only hissed at me once. I think I may have startled him awake. I've not had any issues with him since then.

Well...I just changed the water in my females tub and she had a go at me again. She is definitely the crazier one of the pair (who'd of known). :D

My 20 or so Mojo/Mojo combos are all mellow. Good thing -- I despise mean BPs!!! Last week I heard one of my Mojos give a mean Pastel Y.B. girl the heads-up that rumor has it that Bill gets rid of the mean ones. ;)

My mojo is a mellow fellow!

mine wasnt

Both of my Mojo's are calm and sweet. I think maybe you just got lucky. ;)

Gale

Mine is very fierce as well.But he's alright once you picked him up

My mojave is as sweet as they come.

I guess I lucked out and got two of the nice ones...:rolleyes:

I can't wait to make a super with them!

I currently have 11 mojo / mojo combos in my collection and I find that they are not aggressive , but aggressive feeders. Every single one I currently have or have owned has been a savage eater. Is it the gene?? Who knows , but I wish all my animals fed like my mojos. :D

Mine has a slight attitude. He eats like a machine though, never had an animal like him. He will constrict with his whole body, unlike all my others, who only use about the upper third of their bodies.

Tried to strike at me a couple of times, but he's generally fine.

My mojo is very mellow and fun to hold but when its feeding time he is super aggresive he will strike outside of his tub and then drag his rat back in.

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Originally Posted by demjor19

I have a young male and a young female Mojave that both have terrible attitudes. They strike and hiss at me just about everytime I clean their cages. On the possitive side...they are both excellent feeders! Some of my other BP's can be a little vocal at times, but rarely if ever strike at me. I was just curious if this could be part of the Mojave genetics or if I just ended up with two angry Mojo's. Let me know your thoughts.

Thanks,

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I think the key here is the fact you have young snakes. They do tend to be a little more fussy. As long as they have a great feeding response, I wouldn't worry about it.

Good Luck!
Jim Smith

My Mojo might be the sweetest BP I have ever dealt with...unless youre a rat.

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Originally Posted by TnT Reptiles

I currently have 11 mojo / mojo combos in my collection and I find that they are not aggressive , but aggressive feeders. Every single one I currently have or have owned has been a savage eater. Is it the gene?? Who knows , but I wish all my animals fed like my mojos. :D

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All in all, mine are terrific feeders as well Trevor. However, even my Caramel Mojave girls are no immune to the 1000 gram wall. The last 2 months -- not so much about the food. :(

I only have 1.1 mojave, 08 siblings. The male is very nice and actually a better feeder than the female who is also chocolate. She is a hisser though. Not a bad eater but occasionally skips and never eats seconds like him. They where produced on a breeding loan so the only thing I know about the mojave dad was that he was big. My Garcia line chocolate mom is a feeding beast (ate two retired breeder rats last feeding) and a little jumpy when first handled so maybe that is where the 08 mojave chocolate girl got her hissing from.

My Mojo's are both sweethearts. The male is a terrible eater, but he's a male so he eats enough to make me happy, but I have to turn the lights of and leave the room. I lay on the floor with the hall light on and watch him from around the corner. I'm trying to get him onto p/k with no luck yet.

My female has her moments, and seems to know she has hit 1000 g's so has slowed down on eating :( But, neither has hissed or struck at me. Now my little 2 month old het axanthics? That's a different story.

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.

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.

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.

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

My mojo kinda has a suave twist to it. I think the girls like it!;)

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