Loosing his tamness

[hollowlaughter]

Without fail my snake growls at me if I dare touch him while he has gone blue to shed. Ever single time for nearly 7 years now. He is however the sweetest snake I have ever held outside of those times. My point is tameness is pretty relative but once you get a ball used to people, I don't think they ever forget it.

And this is where your animal's individual disposition plays a part. Mine has been handled during shed, manhandled after shed (lazy idiot didn't want to leave his hide to shed right) by my concerned GF while I was trying to remove the shed stuck on his neck, and never puffed or hissed or bit either of us. Not even any attempts. Some are far more inclined toward tolerance than others, which a similar trait was what led to the domesticated cats, rats, and dogs we have now, after a LONG period of cohabitation and "exclusive" breeding that inherently favored those traits.

Maybe in 40, 60 years, if enough of the well-disposed animals are bred together, who knows?

So honestly a major part of the answer to OP is: it depends on your animal's disposition. If they were barely tolerating handling to start, it might be a concern; probably at longer intervals than a week, however. But if they're one of the individuals whose more tolerant of humans, they may never lose the behaviors that you attribute to "tameness", even with extended non-handling.

For example, I was talking to a person on the snakes reddit the other day that was rehoming an adult female who was housed in a 10G with bad husbandry in a heavy-smoking household, handled at random intervals by random people, pretty much only fed since someone else had dumped off the snake and the house's owner didn't want the poor thing to starve. They ended up blessed with a snake that -- as much as a BP can -- seems to tolerate whatever is done to it with nary a complaint. And yet some people have adults they've had since hatchlings that'll snap at their fingers over minor affronts during sheds, etc. I think we really discount how much effect a snake's personality can have on its behavior in terms of response to stressors and other environmental effects.