Telling the difference?

[ashleeworthen]

My husband and I got a ball python and for some reason she doesn't seem to like it when he's holding her but seems fine with me. Is it possible that she knows the difference between me and him?

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[Eric Alan]

My reply in your other thread: http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showthread.php?p=2362457.

[theoremofgoats]

I'm fairly sure they can tell by a difference in scent, but other than that, not really. Does he wear a certain kind of cologne or deodorant or aftershave that the snake might be wary of? My BP is super docile-even for a BP, he's not even head shy-but he freaked out when my mom stopped by my place once and picked him up, even though the first time she did that, he didn't care. It was a watch she was wearing-something about it freaked him out. She took it off, picked him up again, and he was fine that time.

Look at little differences like those between you and your husband. Snakes don't "like" or "dislike" one person more than another, they just kind of…react, I guess.

[BCS]

I am not too sure of how much it is true. I have a corn snake who tries to bite me when I reach for her, but not my husband. On the other hand I have a ball python that tries to bite my husband when he reaches for her and not me. But these are only two snakes out of my growing collection that acts like this towards us. The others do not seem to care. I have no clue if it is the way we smell, if they just know who is who, or maybe the snakes prefer certain approaches? Who knows...?

[DVirginiana]

They can definitely recognize individuals, but I think how you handle them and avoid triggering defensive mechanisms has a lot to do with it, so if you're more familiar with snakes than your husband that could be part of it.

Not being social animals and having little to no control over facial expression, their brains don't really have 'face recognition software' like many social animals do. Instead they identify their surroundings based primarily on smell and big visual cues rather than nuances in appearance. Garters (which have better eyesight than BPs) can actually recognize major appearance changes like suddenly wearing glasses or putting a dark hat over normally light colored hair and freak out until they smell you.

In relation to colognes/perfumes, I have one blind snake that absolutely doesn't recognize me if I have anything like soap or lotion on my hands.