Does anyone know what this could be?

[Skiploder]

They are not burns.

They are not from a heat lamp.

They are not blister disease. Blister disease looks nothing like this and is normally ventral - not dorsal.

Folks, please watch what you post. Looking at a picture of a snake and then inferring husbandry do's and don'ts, throwing out WAGs and jumping to conclusions about how the OP may or may not be caring for his snake are pointless and frankly, insulting.

Good advice is to take the animal to a vet. It would be great if the OP could spring for a necropsy to see if there was a systemic cause or to find a definitive diagnosis.

[Mephibosheth1]

Necropsy would be great...let us know what you decided in that regard. Sorry for your loss

[Spiritserpents]

I have seen a snake with body-wide blisters like that from an unregulated heat lamp at the veterinary hospital where I work. The snake had no direct access to the lamp, but was still burned.

[B.O.S Reptiles]

I'm really sorry to hear I'd keep a VERY close eye on all of your other snakes. You never know... It could have been something contagious

[ATTFighter]

How do you know 100% for sure that they were not from either of the 3 things you listed? That seems to be jumping to conclusion as well.

They are not burns.

They are not from a heat lamp.

They are not blister disease. Blister disease looks nothing like this and is normally ventral - not dorsal.

Folks, please watch what you post. Looking at a picture of a snake and then inferring husbandry do's and don'ts, throwing out WAGs and jumping to conclusions about how the OP may or may not be caring for his snake are pointless and frankly, insulting.

Good advice is to take the animal to a vet. It would be great if the OP could spring for a necropsy to see if there was a systemic cause or to find a definitive diagnosis.

[Neal]

@OP - I'm sorry to hear you had to put him down.

They are not burns.

They are not from a heat lamp.

They are not blister disease. Blister disease looks nothing like this and is normally ventral - not dorsal.

Folks, please watch what you post. Looking at a picture of a snake and then inferring husbandry do's and don'ts, throwing out WAGs and jumping to conclusions about how the OP may or may not be caring for his snake are pointless and frankly, insulting.

Good advice is to take the animal to a vet. It would be great if the OP could spring for a necropsy to see if there was a systemic cause or to find a definitive diagnosis.

Yea, this is why I said I had no idea and just took a wild guess from what I think it could of been but I said wild guess so he knew that I wasn't sure. I only asked about the heating just in case somebody else had more insight so that question would be answered already.

How do you know 100% for sure that they were not from either of the 3 things you listed? That seems to be jumping to conclusion as well.

Skip is probably one of the most knowledgeable people on the forum, and I would never question his judgement on this. I've learned this from years of being here.

[4theSNAKElady]

Aww...i am so sorry to hear that. Did the vet give you any inkling as to what it could have been? We had a snake that had cancer....cant rule that out, i guess. My condolences.

sent from my incubator

[ATTFighter]

@OP - I'm sorry to hear you had to put him down.


Yea, this is why I said I had no idea and just took a wild guess from what I think it could of been but I said wild guess so he knew that I wasn't sure. I only asked about the heating just in case somebody else had more insight so that question would be answered already.



Skip is probably one of the most knowledgeable people on the forum, and I would never question his judgement on this. I've learned this from years of being here.

Oh trust me I do not doubt that at all, however just from seeing pictures you can NOT just rule out those things 100%. It is possible that maybe something went wrong with the heat lamp and spiked in temp for example. I am just saying you never know. If you look a few post back we have someone who said they work at a vet hospital and have seen something that looked like this before from heat lamp. So to say it is NOT any of those things without knowing circumstances etc. Doesn't mean it could not have been.

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[Pythonfriend]

Skip is extremely experienced and usually right.


about burns: sure, really bad burns can "stick out" by forming blisters, but then the discoloration would be waaaay more extreme and these blisters would be directly under the top layers of the skin.

thats also where the superficial blisters from that blister disease would be.

all i can see from the pics is that this is deeper, completely under the skin, not just below the top layer. thats why i said i have no clue what it is but that i dont see it as a burn.

@OP: sorry for your loss, that really sucks.

[Skiploder]

For any one thinking that this could be either a contact or other type of burn, please share with us of your experience in dealing with necrotic, vesicular or ulcerative dermatitis that presents dorsally/laterally and/or heat lamp burns that occurred without direct contact to a heat source.

Please explain how thermal burns from a heat lamp result in various raised blisters along the dorsal side and the flanks of the snake.

While I can't really rule out anything, I'm also not throwing guesses into the wind. The message here should be to encourage the OP to go to a vet and to encourage him to have a necropsy done.

For all those people who think it's a burn, did you ever suppose for a minute that the attending vet would have recommend euthanasia if those were burns? Even severe burns in reptiles are fairly easily treated with silver sulfazidine, antiseptic baths and sterile cage conditions.

When reptiles suffer thermal burns, they present in several ways depending on the severity of the burn.

What I would classify as first degree burns are largely superficial. First degree burns in reptiles rarely, if ever, blister. The skin reddens and sometimes bruises. These are very easily treated and a vet would not recommend that the animal be put down for these burns. No way, no how.

A more severe or second degree burn in a snake does result in blistering - but also fairly significant oozing. There is widespread discoloration from bruising and color changes in the epidermal layers. The blistering from a second degree burn does not present without discoloration to the edges of the burn. The blisters shown in the photos do not support second degree burns.

In the most severe burns, whatever skin is left turns either black or white. I have never seen blistering associated with third degree snake burns. They always looks like the skin has been either charred or melted off of the animal. There is also a lot of discharge associated with these burns.

Burns from overhead heating sources are extremely hard to contract unless the animal has contact with the source. If it's an external heat lamp as the OP has described, contact burns could conceivably come from the superheated screen on the enclosure (if used), but those burns would present in a pattern and size consistent with the pattern on the screen, not a series of raised, cutaneous swellings on the snake. As some of those burns occurred on the sides of the snake, it would make direct contact burns with an overhead heat source even more difficult to explain.

Now what I have seen are fungal infections in both captive and wild snakes that present in many ways - as subcutaneous reddened nodules, as separations of the outer layer of skin from the inner layer (patches that redden and then separate).....etc.

However, what I'm NOT going to do is throw guesses at the OP. Unless the attended vet was complete idiot, I would find it hard to believe that he would recommend euthanasia for either thermal burns or blister disease.