Quote Originally Posted by patientz3ro View Post
Again, read what he said. The snake did not strike. He said that, not me. If you missed the distinction between striking and picking something up, your reading comprehension is as bad as your grammar.

I'm sorry you have such a low opinion of animal intelligence, but showing your own lack of understanding on the subject is probably not the best way to "make me look bad." The ability to fetch, roll over, or play dead isn't evidence of intelligence. It's a response to conditioning. You're drastically oversimplifying something that you don't understand to begin with. The simple fact is that you can't train a python in the same way you would a cat or a dog. Attempting to do so is a reflection on the trainer's lack of reasoning skills not the animal. You CAN, however develop an understanding of an animal's natural behaviors, and consequently use that understanding and those behaviors to work with an animal. The fact that you obviously have no experience or education in that regard doesn't make it any less true. While reptiles are primitive and have less ability to reason than some animals, you're absolutely wrong in that they can't learn. In fact, you directly contradict yourself by saying they can associate scents with experience. That IS learning AND reasoning. It also shows some capability for abstract thought.

Aside from all of that, I would wager that nearly every keeper on this site has had a personal experience with just how quickly a snake can learn. One escape. That's all it takes. Even you can't argue with the fact that it's extremely well documented that a ball python will escape once, and attempt to escape the exact same way repeatedly.

It doesn't require smoking anything to learn about animal behavior. It just requires that you not be narrow minded.

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Okay, wow. Are you reading what I'm saying, or better yet maybe try to comprehend. I know he said it didn't strike, again. Here, since you're having a hard time comprehending what I'm saying, I'll bold and underline it for you. The snake could of struck and missed. In the process it could of bit his hand.. Do you see that now, or do I need to make it bigger? I know what happened, clearly because my 8 year old nephew could of understood that. What I'm telling you is what could of happened, which you're not understanding. It could of entirely went wrong. This is what I'm trying to get you to understand. No matter how long you've had a snake for, anything could go wrong. This is why I said it's a bad judgement call. You are clearly ignorant to the fact that a snake does not have this intelligence that dogs or cats or other animals have. I'm not sure what planet you grew up on to not understand common sense but wow. Responding to fetch and all that is because the animal was intelligent enough to be taught how to do that. You clearly have no understanding on snakes or knowledge of snakes, or let me rephrase that. You have little knowledge on how intelligent snakes are. You can try to develop an understanding all you want with an animal but in the end, that animal is in fact an animal, which makes them unpredictable. Snakes can learn simple things, escaping is something they do when they're cruising around or wanting to explore. Yes a scorpion can learn to escape too. I can tell you that from experience. I can spend as much time as I want with a scorpion and the fact is they will not learn other tasks. People pick scorpions up and put them on their hand and say, oh my scorpion knows me and won't sting me. WRONG. The fact is that there is a reasonable scientific explanation for this. In most cases, nearly all as a matter of fact a scorpion will not sting the ground/hand/finger it's sitting on. You put your other finger in front of it to touch it and watch what happens though.

People think that snakes enjoy being held. The more scientific explanation for this is that your hand is warm, they like heat because they're cold blooded, and this brings new territory to them. Yes, some get comfortable and will settle down and stay still, but it's not about learning at that point.

Yes hook training a snake helps them differentiate food from getting prepared to being handled. What you fail to realize and is so beyond funny because my 8 year old nephew clearly understands it more then you. BP's use vision as well as the heat pits and the sense of smell. So with the rat being warm, your hand being warm, your hand smelling like rats because you're holding one, and if your snake strikes and misses it's because it was going after one of the smells.

Yes while his snake didn't strike, and it may not strike for 30 more times, but that 31st time it could strike. You've clearly got to learn what you're talking about kiddo.