a first for me: bumblebee tried to eat me!

[rasslinrinyu]

Somewhat recently I acquired a female bumblebee (named Tuna…as in bumblebee tuna). She is now about 700 grams and breaking in nicely. I saw her out an about in her tank this evening which is somewhat rare for her. So I decided to take her out for a bit. I should note that she has been somewhat more shy than most snakes. So I had her out for only a minute or so when I noticed she was rubbing her face on my left hand. I though thats odd and stopped to see what she was doing and then stared dumbfounded as her mouth opened and she tried to eat the backside of my hand ever so gingerly lol. She didnt pop at me, didnt act aggressively, just decided to try and eat the hand that feeds her lol. It was just unusual behavior and not sure if anyone had some input. She ate an appropriately sized mouse 3 days ago and I hadnt been near any rodents since so no chance of scent on my hands. Just something Ive never seen.

[Eric Alan]

Mouse or rat? Even the biggest mice are ~50g, and that's a very big mouse. At 700g, that'd be considered a small meal for her size (from what I know - I don't have any hands-on experience with balls this big quite yet). Most people are feeding multiple mice or switching to small rats before her size. She very well may be hungry again after only 3 days with a meal that size (or smaller).

Of course, I may be way off - you did say she had an appropriately sized meal.

Eric

PS - I LOVE HER NAME!!! Your balls are showing... (please say I'm not way off base thinking you didn't actually name her after canned fish)

[Pyrate81]

1. Greatest name for a bumblebee ball EVER!!! I was singing a bumblebee tuna song yesterday which some ska band wrote back in the 90s.


2. My cali king does that to me when he is hungry. He'll open his mouth and close it sideways over a finger then work his way up to the tip and go to eat my finger. You probably want to increase number or size of prey. My ex gf's 550g ball was eating 1.5 mice/wk; some weeks she would eat one, other weeks she would eat two. So definitely up at least the number of mice you're feeding. I'd say you could probably try a small rat.

[rasslinrinyu]

Im sorry, I didnt meant to say mouse. She did eat a good sized rat so I dont get it. And Eric you are correct with the name lol. Ace Ventura is exactly what my thoughts were when I named her.

[Pyrate81]

How often do you feed her?

[Peoples]

Simply put she's hungry... My girl did that once...

[jasonmcgilvrey83]

Canibial corpse has a song about bumblebee tuna. Lol. Cool name. On another note try switching her to rats. She's will get more from them then she would with mice at this point. Good luck

[Parysa]

My boyfriend's former roommate's ball python used to suckle on his ear. She didn't bite down, would be completely relaxed, not hungry, not trying to get anything more than his earlobe in her mouth. She was a weird one.

[Parysa]

Also, skiball, I'm going to go with the others and say that mice are too small. The prey you offer should be about as big around at its largest part as the snake is at its largest part. I have a 650g male who eats a largish medium sized rat every week. I don't even feed mice to babies. I just start out with baby (crawler?) rats and have never had a problem with any of the seven BPs I've owned.

[MootWorm]

Hey guys, OP already said they mispoke. Tuna is on rats