Quote Originally Posted by JoshSloane View Post
Constrictors arent known to coil and kill as a defensive action. Snakes will strike, hiss and even roll in a defensive manner, but constricting as a part of a defensive strategy is purely fiction from hollywood. If you think about it from an evolutionary sense it doesnt make sense to employ constriction as a defense. Constriction brings you into extremely close contact with an animal that could potentially kill the snake, or even at the very least leave wounds. Defensive snakes want to either scare their prey away with a strike, or depart the situation. From what I have seen, striking in itself is more a byproduct of being housed in a confined enclosure. In nature, the vast majority of the time a snake is threatened they will retreat.
Speaking as a hunter I am going say that you may be shocked what a primarily flight animal will do when cornered. Given a choice will a ball python fight? In my experience no. It will attempt to escape or ball up most of the time. If the animal has no place to escape to my bet is that some will choose to fight. The two males I have that have exhibited this behavior will usually defensively strike first. If I insist that they are hungry they will strike coil and drop the prey. If I try again they may or may not eat it. I have never had a female exhibit this behavior. My bet without any data at this point would be a female on her eggs would strike and kill a rodent, possibly not eating it. I don't think I would want to risk any of my eggs to try that experiment though.

I will except that my theory or observations could be wrong and gladly invite any data or discussion, but anything I am saying is from personal observation of my not small collection of snakes. I am an ex-soldier, a practicing martial artist and a grandfather. Believe me when I say I have enough life experience to differentiate between Hollywood and reality. I say these things solely to have a better conversation. Personally, I would rather be called an idiot rather than it be said I am basing my opinions on some movie titled something like "Giant Pythons at the Prom".