Aggressive behavior?

[NickP]

All of a sudden my BP has gotten very aggressive. At first I thought he might be hungry(since I hadn't fed him in 6 days) because he struck at my hand in a way he strikes at his food. Then I fed him and yesterday he did the same exact thing...following my hand then striking at it just the way he would strike at his FT mice. I still took him out successfully and handled him...but still..why would he start striking at me all of a sudden?

What could be the problem? Could temperature fluctuations cause this? The weather has been weird this past week, fluctuating between 100 degrees and 60. My house ambient temperature has been fluctuating as well

[Freakie_frog]

I have noticed behavior changes in my snakes when the weather goes crazy. They tend to key off the weather and when it goes up and down like that they don't know what to think. I'd say just keep and eye on it and make sure its not stressing him to much and it should settle down.

[Thor26]

can you describe his husbandry

[NickP]

He's in a 32q tub. 420g, around 2 feet long.Temps were always 90F and 80F on the warm and cool sides respectively until the recent weird weather fluctuation. It's been fluctuating between between 90 and 80 on the warm side and 80-70 on the cool side for about a week now. Humidity is between 50 and 60%. He has two hides on each side, fresh water. Substrate is newspaper. Am I missing anything?

[kc261]

If it is getting down to 70 on the cool side, that is pretty cold for a BP. They say 75 & under is unhealthy. Is there anything you can do to stabilize those temps? More insulation around the tub?

How are you controlling the heat? Rheostat? (I'm guessing no t-stat cuz there shouldn't be such huge fluctuations) Maybe you could turn it up a little bit to get the average temps higher at least. Since the higher you list is 90 on the warm side, you have some room to play with before worrying about it getting too hot.

Also since you say he is 420g, he is still growing. Is it possible he is ready for a bump up in prey size, so he was striking out of hunger, even after having been fed? Or if you mean this happened immediately after the feeding he could have just been in hunting mode still.

Am I reading your post correctly that you "took him out successfully and handled him" the day after feeding? Give him at least 48 hours to digest.

[Rarist]

Mine does the exact same thing. Please help us.

[dr del]

Hi,

Is he due to shed?


dr del

[NickP]

If it is getting down to 70 on the cool side, that is pretty cold for a BP. They say 75 & under is unhealthy. Is there anything you can do to stabilize those temps? More insulation around the tub?

He hardly ever is on the cool side so I didn't think it was such a big deal. Plus I've read in some threads here that during breeding season temperatures are usually dropped to 70F on the cool side for months.

How are you controlling the heat? Rheostat? (I'm guessing no t-stat cuz there shouldn't be such huge fluctuations) Maybe you could turn it up a little bit to get the average temps higher at least. Since the higher you list is 90 on the warm side, you have some room to play with before worrying about it getting too hot.

I have a thermostat, but that's not the problem really. The weather has been just crazy the past two weeks. It rained for a week straight and now it's back to 100F. Damn global warming

Also since you say he is 420g, he is still growing. Is it possible he is ready for a bump up in prey size, so he was striking out of hunger, even after having been fed? Or if you mean this happened immediately after the feeding he could have just been in hunting mode still.

Am I reading your post correctly that you "took him out successfully and handled him" the day after feeding? Give him at least 48 hours to digest.

Yes...and no.

He was due to eat on the day he struck at me. I had forgotten, so I went in to take him out and he struck at me. I thought he was hungry, so I fed him that day. 48 hours later I went in to take him out and he struck at me again. Then I sprayed some water on his head, he tucked it back and I took him out and handled him.

You might be right about the pray size tho. He's been on the same size since January when he was 120 grams. The average weight of the mice I feed him is about 25g. Next size is a small rat at 60grams from petco. Should I start feeding that? His growth did kind of slow down as of late.

The reason I think you might be right is because they way he struck at me wasn't defensive or aggressive now that I think about it. It was how he strikes at food. I still have 4 FTs in the fridge, should I just feed two at a time until I they ran out, then get a bigger FT?

Oh and no, he's not shedding yet. Still has about a week or two to go before going in-blue.