Why must you clean hands after handling python?

[chrisdab]

Why do I always hear how it is important to clean your hands after handling reptiles like my ball python, yet I never get an explanation as to why it is important. What makes reptiles different than mammals like dogs and cats. Rats are unhygienic so I can see why one should clean after them. I dont see all reptiles as being unhygienic though.

[Freakie_frog]

As with all animals that lay eggs there is a risk of salmonella.

[mainbutter]

What freakie frog said.

I'm guilty of forgetting to wash my hands often enough though, for the most part you're safe, but really you don't want a bout with salmonella.

[puddintain]

We have to be extra careful in our house. My aunt who comes over alot had a kidney transplant and is on immunsupresants. We don't handle if she is here at all.

[jsmorphs2]

Also, some parasites can be contracted form your animals (not very likely but why risk it).

[mainbutter]

It's a bigger deal for transplant patients, young children, old people etc.

My girlfriend got typhoid, which is a type of salmonella, recently while working in a health clinic doing campaigns in rural peru(she even had the pills you take to help prevent it) and because she was a healthy 23 year old she just took some kind of serious antibiotics by pill for 7 days, she was pretty much feeling all better by the 2nd day except for the drug's side effects.

However if she was some 90 year old lady, she likely would have been hospitalized with a very real risk of dying.

[Bruce Whitehead]

Am I the only person that thinks them laying in their feces and urine is sufficient?

I don`t put the snake in my mouth and I do not put my hands in my mouth after handling the snakes.

[HypoPita]

Am I the only person that thinks them laying in their feces and urine is sufficient?

I don`t put the snake in my mouth and I do not put my hands in my mouth after handling the snakes.

+1

I go through hand sanitizer like crazy!

[Little B-Py]

+1

I keep a bottle in the herp room and make sure that if someone goes in there with an animals and doesn't come out with one that they sanitized.

[mainbutter]

urine is sterile. Not sure about urates, but you could piss all over your hands and chow down on a sandwich and have zero risk of getting sick from not washing your hands.

Not that I recommend it.