People overfeed snakes in captivity all the time. They do not need to eat every time they find a meal, unlike their wild brethren.
There are a dozen reasons a snake might refuse a meal. It's carrying plenty of internal fat, it's early in shed, it's using resources for a growth spurt, a hormone spike is telling it to focus on mating instead of food, a light pattern day length that means "winter is coming, quit eating because you'll get sick of sepsis when prey rots in your stomach," it has a mild bug and needs to fuel it's immune system, not the physical effort of digesting.
Contrary to popular belief, ball pythons do not spend all their lives in termite mounds or underground at constant temperature. They will estivate there during hot months. Some prefer to hunt in rodent burrows, some hunt on the surface, and some (especially males) climb trees. I wonder how the tiny tub proponents rationalize things like the studies showing a high rate of birds as prey in some populations?
Kina hard to ambush a bird from a burrow where you always live and never experience the temperature gradients that exist in every single biome.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/...50009809386744
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