waking up my snake

[YungRasputin]

I never wake up my snakes, reach into their enclosures to handle them, or take them out of their hides unless it's an emergency. Doing so is called 'flooding' (a term used in behavioral science) and it doesn't build a trusting relationship with them.

i disagree - i don’t mean to sound uncharitable but i think there is a distinction to be made between say, for example, a 10 year old reaching into to rustle out their beloved BP and respondent conditioning or “flooding” i.e. an intentional behavioral modification process via the consistent exposure to (strategic) stimuli - so i would argue, re: socialization of reptiles/snakes, this can be extremely effective and in some cases, be critically important to the ownership of particular snake groups and the keeping thereof

you know, like with corn snakes or some other sort of small colubrid snake species, for example, things like tap training and exposure exercises may not be something that would be effective or you know, needed and there is probably a better method by which to socialize those snakes

however! on the opposite side of the spectrum, those techniques are critically important to the *safe* keeping, socialization, handling, etc of large constrictor snakes like Burms, Retics, Anas, Afrocks, etc much in the same way that socialization, training, etc is essential to the keeping, training, handling, etc of big dog breeds

this does not mean however that you should be disrespectful (not respecting their hide as their personal private space and more broadly, the enclosure as personal territory) or that such techniques would be transgressive and so on - it can be a simple as opening the enclosure and gentler touching the snake with the hook for 1 minute and then closing the enclosure, and consistently doing this while increasing the duration until a point is reached when you can start doing this with your hand - then you could move to picking them up and staying stationary for 1 min, etc

again, may differ between species and there’s more than one way to skin a cat but for me and my keeping i think it’s been tremendously important to establish this as early as possible - it’s going to be v important safety to wise that my Burms and Afrocks are familiar/comfortable with hooks, my hands, the familiarity of my heart beats rhythm, of moving them around, handling, etc

which of course this thread is about BPs, so it’s a little different than the above in a way so this was more of a tangential comment