My experience with multi-species cohabitation.

[Critter87]

I know this is considered taboo, but I’ve had my female BP living with a male common garter snake, and an emerald swift for a full year now. There’s been zero issues whatsoever. In fact, the BP’s became a much more reliable eater since my experiment began.

Terrarium is approximately 50 gallons, planted and bio active with isopods, dubia roaches, and whatever other microfauna came with the substrate I collected outside (I live in Idaho, so reptile mites aren’t a concern). I had her in this enclosure by herself for a couple years before carefully introducing her roommates. She had the typical BP behavior then, reluctantly feeding and generally inactive.

The garter snake is an adult male that I caught myself. I kept him in a separate enclosure for a couple months; he quickly tamed down and became very friendly and sociable. I put him in with the python and watched closely as they encountered each other. There was no aggression or visible stress for either. The garter eagerly accepted night crawlers and herring immediately, but the python wasn’t due for a feeding yet. Moment of truth came later. Not only did she take a thawed rat, she took a medium thawed rat, which was a huge step up for her.

Now a year later, she’s much more active and I haven’t had to flush a rat since. As soon as the lights go out, she starts roaming the cage. She also spends a lot of time climbing branches and I’ve even seen her coiled up on them, emerald boa-style.

The garter has been an absolutely amazing pet. He genuinely seems to enjoy and even seek out human interaction. So far he's cured 3 ophidophobes with his personality, including an ex girlfriend and my current one.

As for the emerald swift, she was introduced with the most apprehension on my part. I had to do something to get the insect population down, and she drew the short straw being the only insectivore in my collect that didn't pose an danger to the snakes. The fact that she has the personality of a Nile monitor didn't help her case either. I was most worried that Mr. Garter would go after her, but he had and still has no interest. My hypothesis is that he's never encountered a lizard before in his life, since the only species in my area is the uncommon western five lined skink, of which I've only ever seen twice. So he doesn't know lizards are edible in the first place. Maybe I'd have different results with a western terrestrial garter snake?

The last animal I tried to add to this enclosure was a young pacman frog. THAT didn't go well. Mr. Garter immediately latched on, but I was monitoring as always and rescued the little guy. Didn’t think he’d take on something that big… Gave the snake a fish as an apology and put froggy in his own enclosure. That experience further reinforces my belief that Mr. Garter only wants food he's familiar with, since I caught him in a wetland habitat.

Anyway that's how my little experiment went. Of course I don't recommend trying this yourself. I did it because I had the time and experience to do it safely and controlled, and there was virtually no real-life accounts on the internet, other than "don't do it". Pic taken today.