No I don't think he loves me, but I definitely notice that if someone else holds him he finds his way back to me and then settles down. I feel like its more that "ahhh this big warm thing I don't know is holding me it might eat me, let me go find that other warm thing that I KNOW won't eat me" than actual emotion on his part

In the same way that it is tempting to put all our deep emotions on our snakes, its also tempting to hold steadfastly to the opposite ("snakes have not emotions/feelings/cannot recognize their owners"). Both of these are incorrect, if they are held to in the face of observation and evidence; we learn new things every day about how the world works. The fact is, it has happened consistently over time, so to disregard my real world observations would be JUST as silly and wrong as me going "my snake loves me and adores me and loves cuddling." The best conclusion I can make, based on observation, is that some part of him does recognize me and is able to locate me among other humans and seek me out, and on some level feels safer with me than other people. I can't make any assumptions about if he "loves" me, but then again I can't really even say that about any pets I own. I just don't know! But I still love them <3

I saw someone post somewhere on here, but I can't find it, that "proof" that snakes dont recognize their owners at all and can't process thought was that sometimes people can get killed by their large pythons (and "did they just 'forget' who their owner was?"). My problem with this is that large cats are generally agreed to be intelligent, emotive creatures, yet occasionally you hear stories about zoo keepers or large cat owners being killed by their animal. But no one uses these cases to argue that cats are incapable of recognizing people, but rather its just a case of instinct trumps all (which is the same, but stronger, with snakes).

I'm a new snake owner, but my whole life I've had an amateur interest in biology and science. I know that no matter how many books or articles I read, that doesn't make me an expert, but I do still try and be informed. And thats really the best I can do!