Tips for knowing when an albino bp is in shed?

[arpowell]

I think there are some snakes that are just fine with eating when they are about to shed - if yours is one of them and she's shedding nicely, I wouldn't worry about it

I have an albino BP and here are the ways I can tell when he's about to shed that have nothing to do with colour:

• He stops roaming his enclosure at night
• He is inactive and lethargic when being handled
• His scales kind of stick up where his body bends and he gets a sort of puffy, slightly wrinkled bit of skin around his throat/neck
• He prefers to stay in his warm hide most of the time and stops switching hides

I prefer to avoid shining light or even exposing my albino BP's eyes to bright light because they have no melanin in their eyes to protect them from damage from overexposure to light. Even if they make their pupils slits they aren't getting much protection because of the lack of melanin - the red in their eyes comes from the blood vessels in the eyes that are showing through and are not hidden by colouring from melanin.

A lot of human albinos and albinos of other species have eye sensitivity and while there's no documented proof that BPs experience the same thing I'd guess that without melanin they likely have similar issues.


Gorgeous BP btw, she looks like such a sweetheart!

Thank you for all the tips!! Yeah, I can tell right away she's in shed as soon as I take her out to handle because, like you said, she acts very lethargic, and she gets a little jumpier than usual. I often miss her roaming around at night, but I can usually tell I'll find a shed in a few days when she stops poking her head out looking for food. I'm getting better at seeing that scale-sticking-up look, and hopefully next time I'll spot it sooner (and I'm sure that'll be easier to spot when she's bigger, too!).

She sheds beautifully every time and eats like a champ, so I'm hoping she's just a snake that can multi-task pretty well! And yeah, I'm always super careful about light with her, to the point where I never really even turn anything more than a small lamp on in the room she's in. I'm with you in guessing that albino bps probably have sensitive eyes, so I try to do everything I can to make her comfortable in that regard. Fortunately, though, I have tons of small, low-intensity flashlights to use when I try out Bogertophis' trick, and I'll probably practice on my normal hognose the next time he goes into shed first to make sure it's as brief as possible on her the next time she's due for a shed.

And thank you, she really is a little sweetheart! She even got my mum, who's been afraid of snakes her entire life, to fall in love with her.