Perfect Example Of Cage Aggression And Feeding In The Enclosure.

[southbay54]

haha come on you know you want to be tag

[200xth]

Not yet. When I go through the current batch of micicles I'm going to try my mouse brain on the head trick. Live rat is a last resort. I know there are thousands of pythons eating live rats without issues, but the fact that she doesn't strike or constrict prey makes me a tiny bit nervous. I had a rat in high school that was given to me by a pet shop employee who bought him as a feeder for her BP. That ended badly for the snake.

You really think you have a ball python that doesn't know how to kill small rodents?

[patientz3ro]

haha come on you know you want to be tag

Well, she HAS tagged one person, so I've seen how little damage she can do. I was sitting on the couch with her wrapped around my neck and a friend of mine came in. I told her Ajja was asleep and not to go sticking her finger in her face. Well, someone didn't believe me, and Ajja gave a textbook demonstration of an opportunistic predator on a hair trigger. Apparently, she didn't know snakes have no eyelids and sleep with their eyes open.

Pretty impressive bite. I think it bled almost as much as my last flu shot.

Ajja laid right back down and went back to sleep while I tried to stop laughing.

Sent from my HTCEVOV4G using Tapatalk

[southbay54]

interesting lol

[patientz3ro]

interesting lol

That's an understatement! I realize that every animal has its own unique personality, so Ajja's abnormal temperament and personality could quite possibly be a complete coincidence. On the other hand, the atypical things that I've done in terms of feeding, housing, and "socialization," have all produced almost exactly the results I anticipated. Granted, it hasn't been a strictly "scientific" process, and I haven't attempted to reproduce the same results in another animal but I feel like the majority of my theories are actually playing out. Like I said, though, it could be a total fluke. If that's the case, I'm EXTREMELY fortunate to have gotten a snake that defies conventional behaviors. Either way, I'm really proud of her.

Sent from my HTCEVOV4G using Tapatalk

[bcr229]

She might very well react differently to a live feeder. My normal female acts very like the OP's when eating - zombie dancing a f/t feeder is just a waste of time. Normally I just lay the feeder down in her tub, and she eats it rather lazily and doesn't often bother to constrict it. I think she'd pick it daintily from my hand if I let her.

Last weekend one of the males that eats live only was not interested in eating, so I flipped his small rat into her tub. In a split second she became a wholly different animal - rather than lying in wait as an ambush predator, she tore after it, chased it to the other side of the tub, and hit it like a freight train. She knew the difference all right.