Snake Activity and Frequency of Handling

[MrLang]

how do you guys know pythons do not have emotions? Have you ever been a ball python? Do you know him? Does he call you at home? Do you have a dorsal fin??? lol. To train the dolphin you must think like the dolphin! lol...but seriously...how do you know they don't have emotions? I have seen my snake exhibit what seems like excitement...and I have also seen videos of pissed off, angry snakes. I would call anger an emotion.? no?

While science does not like to admit how little it knows about the physiology of the brain, it does know some very fundamental things about cognition how to measure the parts of the brain responsible for it. Snakes have an extremely limited capacity for emotion, so much so that you could safely say it is nearly non-existent.

'love' = feels unthreatened, relaxed

'excited' = alert to stimuli, unthreatened

'anger' = threatened, defensive

The words love, excited, anger have deeper chemical processes attached to them as they are defined in human language and you can relate to those words. Dolphins are capable of emotional cognition at a MUCH higher capacity than snakes, so much so that you could safely say they do feel emotions the way we define and can relate to them.

People like to make yes or no statements out of things. For the purpose of discussion here, they can do so pretty safely, but it isn't technically accurate. It's much more appropriate to say they can't than can.