LOL.Originally Posted by Slim
I would like to preface this by saying that I feed rodents exclusively and that is also what I recommend...
But for a topic of discussion, this is actually kind of interesting. Wild ball pythons are found with birds and various species of mammals in their stomachs. A quick search for "Python regius stomach contents" on scholar.google comes up with this article:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/1...50009809386744
Which makes a... okay, the conclusion might be reaching a bit, but it does point out the variety of animals found in the stomachs of wild snakes. Different species of animals eat different things, contain different trace minerals and different ratios of all the little nitty gritty things that make up a creature. What WOULD happen if we fed our ball pythons a more varied diet? Is it a failure of us as keepers that we have such difficulties getting them to feed on different prey items?
Again, I'd like to caution that at this time I don't feel there's adequate information to suggest we should deviate from a feeding pattern that clearly works (rat/mouse based diet), but I do think it's an interesting thing to think about... What do we really know about the effects of narrowing down the diet of animals that feed on a variety of things in the wild? This is something that applies to more than just ball pythons - what about other species of snakes, especially those that feed opportunistically on ANYTHING, like kingsnakes?
Food for thought.
-Jen
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