I’ve had my ball python Cinnamon since January. She was supposedly a year old at that time (she was a rescue from a bad situation, so she was pretty tiny and I’m not 100% if that was her actual age). I took her home, and she plumped up very quickly and everything seemed to be going fine. She’s perfectly healthy, her poop is normal, her sheds are in one piece and look great, and there’s nothing seemingly WRONG with her that I can tell, but she’s been acting increasingly aggressive and I’m getting a little concerned.

I recently upgraded her tank from the small 20g long she was in as a baby to a 75 gal (roughly, I don’t know exact sizes) PVC cage from NPI. It’s been about 9 days since then. She ate this Monday, I fed her the last two adult mice I had in favor of moving up to bigger food to accommodate her size and she ate readily. For the first time ever, when I picked her up to move her to her feeding bin, she struck out in an excited frenzy and actually ejected herself from the box and bit the cardboard before finding the mouse and pulling it in.

I gave her about 48 hours to digest, and went to handle her tonight. She was holding her head out in the preemptive ‘S’ striking pose, so I gently tapped her on the head with a pair of metal tongs to try and snap her out of the feeding response. This seemed to work, but when I went to pick her up she actually hissed at me for the first time in her life. I didn’t pick her up, and left her to her own devices, but I’m getting worried about her sudden aggressiveness.

It’s been getting worse since I moved her, and I don’t know if it’s new cage stress, hunger, or some kind of snake puberty. I try to handle her very frequently to reduce this aggression, but I’m just really scared she’s going to continue to get more and more aggressive. Does anyone else have experience with this? I’ve never raised a ball python before, so I’m really not sure if this is a normal behavior or not. Any advice or tips would be wholly appreciated. Thank you!! I’ll also post some pictures of her the day I took her home vs. a few days ago for size references.