Red Lights and Ball Python Night Vision?

I recently got a red light lamp from Zoo Med. During a recent feeding at night, I had the lamp on and it was the only source of light in the room.

Cookie missed her first attempt at striking at her mouse, so I am wondering if they do not have good night vision, or if perhaps my girl is blind...? I thought the red light provides a bright light for us, but for the animal typically will appear as a very extremely dim light, which would be enough to see in the dark with for them. (also is 80 degrees Fahrenheit warm enough for a F/T large mouse...???)

Sometimes they just have bad aim. Also, heat the mouse to around 100*. It's a mammal, its natural body temp is close you what ours would be. Your snake probably didn't sense an amazing heat signature and could explain the missed strike.


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Misses happen. Your BP can probably see better in low light than you can, although there is some question as to whether they can see red (probably not.. although they may be able to see shorter wavelengths than we can). That said, a major way that pythons home in on their prey is by its heat signature, which they "see" with the heat pits. That capability is incredibly sensitive and highly developed. They can nail a prey animal in utter darkness, and BP's that hatch without eyes are still able to eat just fine.
But that's why the prey has to be warmed up to around what its body temperature would be if it were alive. It has to be warmer than the background, or it doesn't "look" like food. And if your hand is nearby and warmer than the prey, or the prey is in between the snake and the much hotter heat lamp, you could be presenting a confusing image.

I've been worried about cooking the rodent and burning the snake. Also isn't 100* a burn point for a snake? Or is that only when they are on something at that heat that will burn them?

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Originally Posted by Coluber42

... if your hand is nearby and warmer than the prey, or the prey is in between the snake and the much hotter heat lamp, you could be presenting a confusing image.

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I feed with tongs to avoid that specific issue :)

But point taken about the mouse needing to be warmer. But with the light, I just wanted to feed her in "darkness" for her to be less stressed about hunting without blinding myself as well... :confuzd:

Where is your light located? I've notice with my woma, who has a head wobble, he seems to be confused by multiple heat sources. He knows when prey is in the area, but will sometimes strike at the wrong heat source. A miss is one thing, but my guy will totally strike in the wrong direction, up towards the RHP.

My Pastel has no issues and is very on-target.


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I had similar incidents with my snakes stiking at the lights or other heat sources. I can relate lol.

Before you go poking at her eye or whatever, no your snake isn't blind. they miss the strike from time to time, Its not a pitviper.

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Originally Posted by KingWheatley

I've been worried about cooking the rodent and burning the snake. Also isn't 100* a burn point for a snake? Or is that only when they are on something at that heat that will burn them?

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First of all, wild snakes that eat prey they have just killed do not get burned by the prey's natural body temperature.

Snake flesh burns basically the same as human flesh does. The reason snakes can get burned by unregulated UTH's is two things: one, if their body is insulating the heat source, the temperature can climb gradually until it is much warmer than it would get with nothing on top of it. The other reason is that if the snake sits on a hot surface for a long time and its belly is gradually getting warmer and warmer, it doesn't notice.
Supposedly this occasionally happens with humans too. People get burned by heating pads without realizing or while they're sleeping because your skin doesn't really detect absolute temperatures, it detects the difference between the skin and other objects. If you run one hand under cold water for awhile and the other hand under hot water for awhile and then stick both hands into tepid water, the tepid water will feel cold to one hand and hot to the other hand. In the case of a hot pad that is plugged in, the total amount of heat energy is effectively limitless because as it transfers heat to whatever it's sitting on, the heat pad keeps making more. So your skin gradually heats up and you don't feel the hot pad as being hot, because your skin is hot too. Until you take it off and your skin is all red.

But a rodent that has been swallowed doesn't have very much total heat in it, even if it is over 100°. The heat energy in the body of the rodent gets dissipated and there isn't enough to burn anything.

That said, if you overheat the rodent or try to heat it too quickly, you'll end up cooking the skin which will then split and make a mess. But again, a mouse or rat's skin can handle being 100°; that's in the range of its normal body temperature.

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Originally Posted by Coluber42

First of all, wild snakes that eat prey they have just killed do not get burned by the prey's natural body temperature.

Snake flesh burns basically the same as human flesh does. The reason snakes can get burned by unregulated UTH's is two things: one, if their body is insulating the heat source, the temperature can climb gradually until it is much warmer than it would get with nothing on top of it. The other reason is that if the snake sits on a hot surface for a long time and its belly is gradually getting warmer and warmer, it doesn't notice.
Supposedly this occasionally happens with humans too. People get burned by heating pads without realizing or while they're sleeping because your skin doesn't really detect absolute temperatures, it detects the difference between the skin and other objects. If you run one hand under cold water for awhile and the other hand under hot water for awhile and then stick both hands into tepid water, the tepid water will feel cold to one hand and hot to the other hand. In the case of a hot pad that is plugged in, the total amount of heat energy is effectively limitless because as it transfers heat to whatever it's sitting on, the heat pad keeps making more. So your skin gradually heats up and you don't feel the hot pad as being hot, because your skin is hot too. Until you take it off and your skin is all red.

But a rodent that has been swallowed doesn't have very much total heat in it, even if it is over 100°. The heat energy in the body of the rodent gets dissipated and there isn't enough to burn anything.

That said, if you overheat the rodent or try to heat it too quickly, you'll end up cooking the skin which will then split and make a mess. But again, a mouse or rat's skin can handle being 100°; that's in the range of its normal body temperature.

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Ah! That makes a lot of sense.

Also part of this was not bothering to look up body temperatures for mice. (I thought they were in the 70's, for some reason... so I thought 80° was pushing it... )


Herp Derp

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Originally Posted by BeelzeBall.

Before you go poking at her eye or whatever..

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Who would poke any animal in the eye to test vision?? Eye caps or no, that's not even remotely scientific...

If I wanted to test her vision, I'd take an object of sorts and wiggle it around. Problem is that anything that is a different smell/temperature would ruin that experiment...

Perhaps a shadow test, first? If she sees movement and reacts, then it can be confirmed she is not 100% blind at least.

I'm not going to do this. Speaking theoretically.


Herp Derp

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Originally Posted by BPGator

Where is your light located?...

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In this instance it was behind him. I've since moved it over a water bowl but I'm about to move it back because it messes with the ambient temperature much more than the original light did.



Herp Derp

BPs aren't sight hunters. They hunt by heat signatures. They don't have the best sight. And my snakes will miss here and there. It's why you use tongs to feed them and not hang them with your hand.

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Originally Posted by Sauzo

It's why you use tongs to feed them and not hang them with your hand.

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I have always used tongs to feed Cookie. :)


Herp Derp

https://vimeo.com/189727270

In case anyone is interested in a lightly humorous video of the event....


Herp Derp

This is a video that someone posted to the "general herp" forum awhile ago, of a professor discussing work his lab has been doing studying snakes' infrared sensing abilities. It's longish, but really fascinating and informative. One of the tests they did was with copperheads where they put the snakes in a completely dark box with a moving target that was warmer than the background and tracked how the snakes followed the movement of the target, which they did very effectively. Then they used a target that was cooler than the background, and the snakes moved their heads OPPOSITE to the movement of the target. In other words, they fixated on the warmer thing - the background when the target was cooler, and the target when it was warmer. Obviously this is a different snake and a different setting, but I think it may well be applicable. If you are dangling a 75 degree mouse and there is a heat lamp in the background, the snake is not likely to aim for the cooler target. It seems a little dumb on the snake's part, but it does make sense for an animal that hunts a warm blooded prey at night; how many scenarios can you think of where a rat would be cooler than things in the background?

The video also describes experiments they did with burmese pythons to test how small of differences in temperature they could detect. It involved teaching them to push a button for a food reward... which required getting them to eat meals of a bazillion mice in a row, instead of one big prey! Pretty incredible. What's also incredible is that they don't actually know how sensitive the snakes' IR sense is, because they ran up against the precision of their equipment first.

Anyway, it's totally cool and worth the half an hour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdjYn5_BqJU