First off let me say there are varying degrees of seriousness when it comes to snake bites, or for that matter all animal bites. There are feeding/prey bites, defensive bites, and depending on the animal, play and fight bites.
Snakes usually respond with a feeding bite, which can be very serious depending on the snake and size of it, or a defensive bite which can still be bad, but should not be as severe as a serious feeding response bite. For the purpose of this discussion I'm speaking only of non venomous snakes.
I've seen some horrible reticulated python bite photos with "feeding mistake" stories attached and they are certainly something to take note of, but they are generally rare.
I have taken a few snake bites in the short time I've been into the hobby. The only semi photo worthy bite is from my boa constrictor.
Not to make light of it, but I lived. He was small, it was a feeding response bite but it was short lived. I reached in to take his news print off the substrate while he was still swallowing the tail of his rat. He decided to have another go thinking I was rat #2.
I was almost hesitant to post the next photos because I've been an advocate of certain dogs ("bull breeds") for years. As a matter of fact, I feel every bit as strongly about preserving the American Pit Bull Terrier and the Presa Canario breeds as I do any species of snake. This is not an attempt to trash on dogs, far from it.
I just want to put some things into perspective when it comes to what are accepted as "safe animals", in this case dogs, VS what are normally considered dangerous, wild, exotic animals, snakes, for this purpose, and how either of them can leave a "mark".
This is NOT a "What's better" thread. Irresponsible behavior with any pet can have consequences.
Some background:
I have been involved in handling and competing with protection dogs for about 15 years. I've been involved in the training and decoying as well.
There is NO BAD BREED of dog! Just bad owners and handlers. I need to get that out of the way before continuing.
This next series of pictures is of an accidental training bite that I took from a Presa Canario.
The dog didn't really want to bite me at all, but rather the bite sleeve we were using for training. I misjudged the slack in the handler's leash and paid the price.
The wound resulted from a prey/play bite that lasted less than a second. I'm guessing these are about 11-12 years old and are of poor quality. I had cleaned up prior to shooting these.
I'm not a small person, but the power this particular dog displayed in a split second was sobering and made me feel very humble. There is a big difference in your confidence level when you take a bite without a bite suit on. The photos were taken on the same day it happened. The following days looked much worse. What you don't see is the back of my thigh and top of my calf. The internal bleeding and settling of blood 2 days latter was ugly.
I was wearing a pair of insulated tights, and regular blue jeans (basically 2 pairs of pants) during the training. We were not using a bite suit at the time because the dog was not that advanced and the exercise was focused on 2 decoys with 2 separate sleeves (long story). I basically got what I had coming for not paying closer attention.
The trauma actually got worse as the day went on.
I'll stop there as it isn't necessary to further. Obviously it was not a terrible bite, not at all, though it did hurt.
My point here is that the bite and release was the same fraction of a second you'd get from a quick snake bite yet it resulted in much more damage. I'm very lucky this dog was in prey/play drive rather than fight or defensive drive. He would have easily ripped my quad muscle off.
Uninformed people tend to have a misconception that ALL reptile bites are brutal and far more scary than simple dog bites, if the term "simple" can be used. This really was a simple dog bite IMO, and the dog was almost as surprised as I was. Both animals can certainly notch up the severity of a bite depending on the intention. But outside of the really big snakes you won't see trauma like this from a bite and release.
Note I said bite and release. Things change dramatically with a very large snake and the act of constriction. It becomes a very level playing field then, and I'm not going down the worst case scenario road with this right now. There are cases involving both animals that have horrible outcomes, thankfully they are rare situations.
I want to make clear that this post is to make folks aware that ALL animals come with potential risks and certain responsibilities. We, the owners, are the ones who should prevent accidents.
My intention here is not to elevate reptiles over dogs, any other pet or vice versa. If the discussion goes that way, I'll ask the moderators to remove the post.
The photos are examples of bites that I have personally taken from two different animals and neither one was behaving in a manner that was "aggressive" specifically toward me. In actuality they were doing what they were supposed to do and I was not.
Obviously the dog was much larger at about 120 pounds and the snake was just a little guy at the time. You'd have to have an enormous snake to come equal that dog bite, and the mechanics of the bite are much different so the results would differ.
"Safe" is what you make it with any pet.
Bit of a rant??? Yeah, probably. But hopefully it made some sense.
Enjoy ALL of your pets, be good, responsible owners and stay away from those chompers LOL!
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Originally Posted by Fraido
