Touchy subject that i need some light shined on....

[Mike Cavanaugh]

In the wild, when one animal is feeling stressed by the presence of another animal it has the option of escaping that stress by crawling away and finding a location where it can be alone. Not so in your current setup.

Stress is bad for ball pythons ... even worse for gravid females ... and the crummy thing about stress is that most of the time you can't see it, smell it, or know it's there one way or the other until it's usually too late ... seems to me, it's better for the animals to take the possibility of stress out of the equation as best as we can. Housing each animal individually guarantees that stress from a dominant cage mate will not be a problem.

If we were that worried about the snakes stress, and its ability to always get away from the presence of another animal #1 we wouldn't be keeping a ball python in captivity in the first place and #2 We would NEVER handle our snakes because that would be very specificly putting them in the situation where they loose the option of crawling away and being alone. In fact, we would never even go into the same room as them where they can feel our presence.

Would love to see some kind of study one of these days that somehow someway proves that ball pythons do not benefit it any way from being around other ball pythons. Until that happens, it is only a theory. Just like my theory that states the opposite.

Maybe you should have waited until you moved to a bigger place before getting so many snakes?

Why when this is true?

Will the snakes benefit from living in pairs instead of living by themselves? Who knows? I don't think they will BUT I also don't think it will be detrimental to them, or even be uncomfortable to them in any way shape or form. Keep in mind, these are healthy, established snakes that are showing no sings of stress. They still eat every single time food is offered and are growing just as fast as others in my collection of the same age that are living by themselves.

Mike, this is a very interesting thread, I am amazed your flame wording has kept people from jumping down your throat.

Can you please post some links of the movies you refer to.

It's hard to jump down someones throat when they are experienced and educated on the subject... and you don't have a strong argument against him.

Did a 1 minute search and found this. You are welcome to search the web yourself. won't be hard to find. This is a case where two males are living together with one female with lots of eggs present. If you look in the background it looks like the guy is still trying to get a 4th snake out... Males kept together will battle for a female... but here is a case where mother nature seemed to make everything work out just fine.

YouTube - Ball pythons in the wild