So I have a couple of ball pythons. I am pretty close to my male. He has been a really fun snake, very tame, and genuinely seems to like people and enjoy being held. He's is the coolest snake.
Though I have been advised not to feed in the cage, I do anyway. I do not allow the mice to run loose in the cage with the snake at any time to avoid bites, and mostly to keep the mice from defecating all over the place. I hand feed them. Today, my male snake missed the mouse and i dropped it. Without even thinking, i reached in to pick up the mouse since he was running away. With the set up being pretty elaborate, the mice have plenty of space to hide and plenty of time to "eliminate" everywhere...which is sick. haha. So anyway, when a snake strikes and misses, they are usually sort of disoriented for a moment. Sort of..overexcited about trying to find the prey they just lost out on. Well, he was still in strike mode when i reached my hand in. I got bitten. Granted, it was completely 100% my fault, but he knew he messed up. When I gave him the mouse a second time...he didnt strike at it. It was as if he knew that he bit me and he shouldn't have. He moved in slowly to make sure he knew what he was eating. The second mouse i gave him 30 minutes later...he did the same thing. This python.....very slowly moved toward my hand and opened his mouth and grabbed the mouse, but not before being nipped on the nose because he was moving so slowly. It was the most bizarre thing I have ever seen a snake do. Normally when a snake strikes, it is so fast you cant even see it. My snake took a live mouse from my hand like a well behaved golden retriever would take a side of bacon. Amazing. Could it possibly be that snakes are smart enough to learn from a mistake? Or have problem solving skills? What do you think about this?? I loooove my ball python!