Question about ball pythons eyesight

Yesterday I went to feed my bp Dante. I dropped the rat into the other side of the bin from him, then began the countdown. To this point no rat or mouse has lasted more then 15 seconds.

Anyway, Dante immediatly struck upwards into the air about six inches from the actual rat. Once it pulled back down it flicked it's tongue and slithered around the enclosure for a minute before it finally found the rat. After that it was business as usual.

I'm questioning why it struck into the air. I've haven't done a lot of research on the ball python's front heat sensors or their eyesight capabilities. Does anyone out there have any detailed information on how bp's see and move?

On a sidenote he did just shed, but there's no skin on the eye caps that I've seen that would explain the weird behavior.

my bp struck into the air and missed the last time i fed her as well. she sure didn't miss on the second try though. generally speaking their eyesight isn't that great. but i'm gonna let someone else give us the details on this one cause i'm just a noob. :)

I would say there was a little confusion about heat/smell. Ive noticed that snakes that rely heavily on their heat pits tend to have bad aim when it is warm around them. What time of day did you feed him? Feeding in the evening when it is darker/slightly cooler increases their chances of nailing their target.

I fed him around 6 p.m. after returning home from vacation (been out of town for a few days). I keep my study fairly dark when I'm not around, so the only light was from my computer desk and his heat lamp. It was also fairly cool (except for his cage of course) in the room when this took place.

I thought about that heat signature / smell as well. But he literally lunged straight in the air aobut a foot. In fact I put the rat in along the far wall, I never held it near the spot Dante struck at. Maybe he was aiming at me. :shock:

hmmm interesting, could be!

From what i have observed a ball python's eyesight is based on movement. But when hunting they rely very little on eye sight. When the rat was in there it wasnt moving so it didnt interest him. If you made it move i will bet you money he will go after it.

back when i fed live rocky struck and missed twice becuase the mouse was so darn fast. Now that he is eatin pre killed there is no more mistakes ;)

My guess would be that he smelled food but picked up on your heat signature. Its problem with larger boids like burms with strong feeding responses.

Remember these snakes are nocturnal so they really don't rely on eyesight to get around. If I remember right, the eyes of nocturnal animals have a different balance in the number of rods and cones and other receptors than diurnal animals do. They see more in shadows than in definition like we do. In other words, if they see a rat shaped object sitting on the ground that niether gives off heat nor smells like a rat, they will not percieve that object as food.

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My guess would be that he smelled food but picked up on your heat signature.

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LOL what I was about to go into as well.

Was your head near the tank and were you maybe breathing in his direction, or mouthing that countdown? I know a few snakes who have homed in on that thermal cue. I went to check on Sesha today and on popping the lid on her enclosure gretted her, my head being near the lip, she immediately raised up a bit and her tongue went wild as she honed in on me. I used to think when they did this they were reacting to the sound but think that the warm expelled breath is a lot more likely to attract their attention.

Hehe, this reminds me of what happened last weekend when my neighbours kid brought over his bp(the one that he doesn't take care of very well....nothing to read temps and humidity, no decent hides except for a piece of wood balanced between two decor skulls..and heat is just from the red light on top of the cage..but I wont go on about this kid too much now)...anyway he had his bp over for a bit, which was cool because I haven't handled snakes much at all, so its always fun. And he wanted me to take a few pics of him and "Monty" on my webcam. So I log on my computer and stuff, then he starts freaking out saying "hurry hurry put something up on the screen! I don't want him to see your snake on your desktop" (I have a snake as my background wallpaper). And I started laughing and asking him what he's talking about. Apparently he didn't want "Monty" to see my wallpaper because he might get jealous or upset and start striking and go nuts. I had to tell him that bp's have bad eyesight, and he'd maybe strike the monitor if it moved and was heated up...and smelled like mousey(unless I'm wrong and the bp could see well enough to make out a pic of a snake on my computer..). I dunno, that kid thinks he knows what he's doing, but from his enclosure, the snake(it's quite lazy and when you hold it it doesn't show much strength), and what he's tried to tell me(like yelling at me when I told him my enclosure is heated to 93 on the warm side, saying that's way too hot), he knows nothing and should be lucky that snake has put up with his crap for a year now.

k...this didn't have much to do with this topic at all did it...damn my ranting and rambling. :( I think I should just make a topic about this neighbor kid and get it off my chest. :( I suck

I have noticed that my Ball Pythons sometimes get worked up over the aroma of the rodents that I bring into my snake room...they will lash out at nothing in their apparent eagerness...they get all wound up....needless to say I am quite careful in approaching them and removing the lids to their enclosure - they are prone to going after anything ( namely ME ) that has a heat signature I think.
EyeLashViper

Mine too seem to perk up when the aroma of rat is in the air. Not to the point of striking out at me or the cage, but i can definitely see a difference in their behavior. Smell plays a gigantic part in their perception of the world.

Heat, smell, nocturnal sight. A helluva lot of variables on peoples personal experience. Doesn't anyone know for sure the exact hunting nature of our favorite snakes?! :mrgreen:

My bp seems to prefer nocturnal sight I've noticed. Whenever I turn on my computer at night, he always comes out and rests on a branch watching for hours on end.

I'm still baffled though. =)

They use heat-sensing pits, taste/smell and yes eyesight as well. THey are more of an ambush style predator as they are not really a high-speed pursuit snake. They ARE nocturnal snakes, but don't really have "nocturnal sight" hence the heavier reliance on taste/smell and the use of pits to zero in on a heat signature.

Here's some gobbledegook on eyesight easily googled up (info included on boa constrictor as well):

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The visual pigments of B. constrictor are virtually identical to those of the pythonine boid, Python regius. Three different visual pigments are present, all based on vitamin A1. The visual pigment of the rods has a wavelength of peak absorbance (max) at 495 ± 2 nm. The visual pigment of the more common, large cone has a max at 549 ± 1 nm. The small, rare cone contains a visual pigment with max at 357 ± 2 nm, providing the snake with sensitivity in the ultraviolet. We suggest that B. constrictor might employ UV sensitivity to locate conspecifics and/or to improve hunting efficiency. The data indicate that wavelength discrimination above 430 nm would not be possible without some input from the rods.

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http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/c...09349/ABSTRACT