boas cohabitating with pythons

[Alexandra V]

Perhaps someone can help me understand a little here. I'm not trying to be contrary, but I've been reading a lot on the web because I was quite surprised by the answers. Seems to me when we go see snakes at the zoo, they are often kept 2-ish to a tank. Same would be true of juvenile snakes I see from breeders on youtube. And then there are pet stores (hardly the best-and-brightest, but I've seen lots of pythons kept in the same tank over the years, and in a couple of instances, boas and pythons kept together).

The word on the web seems to be that you can keep ball pythons together, but with the caveat that a) you'll wind up with eggs and b) diseases become a problem with a distant c) of one may eat the other.

A couple of places say that the attitude has changed over the years, which may be why I was misinformed; I've kept ball pythons since 96 or so, and they've always been together (fed separately of course). These two are just the newest. But back then we didn't have forums where I could ask questions. This is my first boa.

Anyways, it would be helpful if somebody could explain a little if there have been changing attitudes on the concept, or if I am missing something when I see a few large burms at the zoo, and so on.

Thanks everyone for your replies.

I see where you're coming from with the remark about seeing them often kept a few to a cage in zoos, videos and stores. Thing is though, all of those situations are situations in which they have limited space. Either they know that it's not the best but they do it anyways simply because they have no other choice, or they don't know better and just do it because they think it's fine.

And as for the changing attitudes, there definitely have been changes in the attitudes of keepers over the years, and there will continue to be changes as time goes on because that's how the pet industry works. We're constantly learning more and more about the animals we keep and make adjustments to the way we keep them accordingly.

For instance, come back with me to the 30's; people kept dogs and fed them table scraps and foods that were practically plastic for all we know, and that was perfectly fine in their minds because nobody knew better. They thought they were doing the best for their dogs, and the dogs did alright with it, despite it not being ideal. Then people did more and more research as time went on, and all the way up to today people are becoming more and more conscious of what they're feeding their dogs (and cats for that matter) and we're seeing a rise in consumers buying higher quality and holistic pet foods for their animals because we've learned that it tends to be better for them. Back in the thirties, that would have all been nonsense.

Same thing goes with the snakes. They used to be kept together because nobody thought much of it. There were occasional incidents of disease or cannibalism etc, but people just thought it a fluke, and thought it more or less unnecessary and inconvenient to house them separately. Now we're seeing better caging systems that save space and allow us to house snakes separately while keeping a lot of free space, as well as more and more people figuring out that it's better for them to be separate, so views have changed.