Huge enclosure set-up

[steve_r34]

I type 6 words a minute so i have nothing to say


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lmao .. what are u talking about monkey .. im so tired ... I hate working overnights

[MonkeyShuttle]

Shrug... 4 am here


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[steve_r34]

yea here too .. I don't get done with grown up life until 4pm

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still got another 12hrs .. cant wait to go home and sleep

[steve_r34]

im to go sleep in the back

[Slim]

Slim from the first comment on the other post you've been nothing but rude.
You either cant read or idk. I DONT HAVE MY BALL IN A BIG ENCLOSURE.
DID YOU READ THE ARTICLE I BASED MY QUESTION OFF OF. no you probably didnt.
but w.e man how dare i question anything look at the first comments from non veterans, people who still probably know more than me still.
They read that I dont have my bp in a big enclosure and was just asking but i guess Veterans who know everything can be jerks about stuff like this.
You are the rudest person ive came across on this site by far and you should try being a lot nicer smh

Yes, clearly I've been the rude one in this thread...

I don't see where Slim was accusing you of putting your snake in a big enclosure?

Very True, but I think he went right past that fact into the land of make believe...

Also telling Slim to be nice is like telling a dog to not wag its tail, it's never going to happen.

Oh, if brutal honesty just weren't soooooo darn brutal...

Second i asked for experience he just said it doesnt work then he said he has six years experience afterwards

He just didn't post a sufficient one meeting my standards

[leylaraks]

OP, the veterans on this board have given you sufficient answers over and over again. Dude, I've only been a snake hobbyist for 2 and a half years and even I can tell you they prefer smaller spaces. I look in my enclosures and where are my snakes? Inside their hides, in little balls...not all stretched out. They are, after, called ball pythons... It's kinda in the name.


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[DooLittle]

Well first of all OP, you can't tell people not to post. It's the internet. Just because you start a thread, doesn't mean you can control who posts on it. Everybody is welcome to posting and their opinions/answers.

Secondly, you aren't going to find many with "large cage experience" here, because nobody does it. Because it typically is not the optimal housing situation for a ball python. If you want to talk to someone with experience throwing a baby ball into a 50 gallon tank, just go ask Petco. I'm sure they know.

[Kodieh]

The short answer is we're not raising wild intelligent animals. They aren't exposed to it and forced to experience (however, don't throw a hatchling in a huge cage and expect it to work).

This goes back to a nature vs nurture effect, and I'm of the opinion that we've bred the nature out.

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[satomi325]

The short answer is we're not raising wild intelligent animals. They aren't exposed to it and forced to experience (however, don't throw a hatchling in a huge cage and expect it to work).

This goes back to a nature vs nurture effect, and I'm of the opinion that we've bred the nature out.

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I disagree
We haven't really bred the 'nature' out. Captive BPs are still quite the same as their wild counter parts. BPs are a docile species by nature, in general. They haven't been captive bred long enough to be drastically different from the wild ones other than the paint job. They aren't domesticated. Ball pythons aren't that intelligent to begin with, but the natural survival instincts are still there. If you left CB snakes out in the wild, I bet many of them could still survive. They're still the same genetically. A WC baby could be just as tame as a CB.
Our snakes aren't that much removed from the wild since imports and new mutations from the wild keep coming in and constantly bred into the the captive population.

I do agree, however, on that our captive animals do not experience or forced to live as they do in the wild.

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[CryHavoc17]

Im only going to give one more response on this thread and leave it be after that.

The OPs question is "why cant I put my baby ball in a 40 gallon tank, and where does the idea that they require small spaces when young come from?"

To consider this we need to look at the natural instincts and habitat of a wild hatchling ball python. Pythons do not nurture their young. After the leave the egg they are on their own, and are a very inviting meal to a LOT of predators. For a ball python to survive very long in the wild (this pretty much applies to any non nurtured babies, but snakes and lizards especially) the number one most important thing is to protect itself from predators. This takes priority over everything else. Food, water, temperature, everything. Hatchling mentality is "dont get eaten no matter what. Ill focus on that other stuff after im sure nothing will eat me." So if you keep a hatchling ball python in an environment that keeps it constantly on gaurd for predators and unsuccessfully attempting to locate a more secure location, it wont eat because it hasn't met the basic instinct of "safety first." An all glass top opening display aquarium of any size does not do a particularly good job of meeting this safety first requirement. The difference between a small opaque tub in a rack and a 40+ gallon display aquarium, to the snake, is the difference between being buried deep in a rocky crevice, rodent burrow, or termite mound, and being stuck in the middle of an open field with nothing but one single rock to hide under. That hand reaching down on it from above even looks a heck of a lot like a bird of prey's talons swooping down for a meal.

As a snake gets older it has a couple of things going for it that make it more likely to thrive in that same glass aquarium. It has grown significantly, so it has many fewer predators to worry about. It also has years of experience with the fact that in its captive environment there are no predators, and that hand that looked like death a few years ago looks more like the delivery of a meal or an opportunity to explore some new territory.

Pythons are also masters of conservation of energy. They move only as much as is neccicary to meet their basic requirements for safety, food, water, temperature, and mating later in life. In nature they can, and will, travel significant distances in order to satisfy those basic requirements. But they will not cover any significant ground just for the fun of it. If their basic requirements are comfortably satisfied in their environment they have absolutely no incentive to leave, and wont.

Ive been keeping a small number of snakes, both BPs and others, for years. At one point or another ive used every manner of glass aquarium, tub, rack, DIY cage, and PVC cage. There is a reason all my snakes are now in either racks with tubs or solid sided front opening enclosures. They just work better for a million reasons, the level of security that the snake experiences is very high on that list.

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