Quote Originally Posted by SpartaDog View Post
Housing snakes of different species together is just flat-out stupid. If you don't have the room/money for another enclosure, don't get another snake. I would advise your friend to separate their pythons and boa immediately. Different species have different environmental parameters that need to be met. Also, housing animals together allows them to stress each other out, which leads to a whole slew of health problems. If you have your animals separated, you can prevent future disease/parasite outbreaks from spreading. And finally, boas and pythons can both get a disease (I forget what it's called) that shows little to no symptoms and, while survivable for boas, is 100% fatal in pythons.

They may "get along" (it's probably more just tolerance than actually enjoying company), but keeping them together for extended periods of time is really a bad idea. If you have them out for an hour or two and let them interact it's fine, but not 24/7.

Now that that's been said, smaller carpet pythons (I believe the smallest is Irian Jaya), blood pythons (short but HEAVY), dwarf locality boas, rainbow boas, and Dumeril's boas usually stay 5 - 7 ft, and if you're looking for even smaller, spotted and children's pythons don't usually pass 3 or 4 ft.
well first of all i never considered them to be companions, that wasnt my intention nor was it stated. 2nd its called IBD, inclusion body disease, which is why you buy the snake from a reputable dealer and quarantine them..obviously. 3rd red tails and balls have the exact same husbandry needs, so there is no conflict or this wouldnt be a possibility. I think that if he has done this for 10 years straight, and they havent had health issues, and they are not picky eaters it is not a huge deal. Yes there is a possibility of the snakes idk being cannibalistic or aggressive towards each other, but that sort of stuff is easily discovered by simply putting them near each other for a length of time to see how they respond. I see this sort of tunnel vision all the time on this site, people say if you get this type of bark the snake will die, or this temp is too hot or cold.. Its a lot simpler than people make it out to be. If they have space, i think it should be fine. And they will have ample space to where they dont ever even need to come around each other if thats the case