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JackAsp Greatballzofire Concolor1 |
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JackAsp View Profile |
Constriction instinct
Obviously there was an instinctive aptittude factor, since many types of snakes never figure out the constrivtion trick at all. But there also seemed to be a a big learning curve. I’ve had Winkle since he was 9 days old, though, and he’s over 11 months now. He’s been on f/t that entire time, and never had to do anything more aggressive than slithering up to a food dish and swallowing. Oh, sometimes he’ll lift up the whole rodent and wave his head around like the Loch Ness Monster while he eats it, but I think that’s just using gravity to gt a better swallowing angle. Today he surprised me. I put his food in and he slithered over to about 6" from it, and then just sat there relaxing. No tongue flicks or anything. So I opened up the cage and lifted the food up to draw a little more attention to it, figuring I’d just put it back down and walk away. I knew he had to be hungry. He usually stops eating before sheds now, so he was overdue for a feeding, and he’s usually my biggest beggar. I didn’t even get a chance. He LUNGED, grabbed it, and threw a coil around it. Even held on and acted like he was constricting it for a while before eating. Then, afterwards, when I took the feeding dish out, he was completely normal again. I have no idea what triggered that constriction response. He’s taken food from my hand before, but never before with so much frenzy. Has he been watching "Animal Planet" when I’m not home or something? |
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| 08/24/09 01:51pm |
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Greatballzofire View Profile |
Message To: JackAsp In reference to Message Id: 2062855 Constriction instinct
Until fairly recently I mainly fed live mice to my bulls and gophers, and they would all constrict the mouse and kill it before eating it. But now that the snakes are much bigger and the mice are also bigger, I kill the mice just before feeding so as to avoid injury to the snakes. If the mouse is already dead the snakes just take it and eat it, but if it is alive they grab it and throw their coils around it until it is dead. What is funny is sometimes very young snakes will have the mouse firmly in their coils, and after it is dead the snakes have to poke around in the Gordian Knot of coils to find the place to start swallowing. Like, I know that mouse is in here somewhere! |
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| 08/24/09 09:01pm |
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Concolor1 View Profile |
Message To: Greatballzofire In reference to Message Id: 2063028 Yeah, I’ve Had Them "Kill" F/T Food . . .
Their responses can be particularly savage, and my big bull once drew blood when she nailed me instead of the smallish prey item I wanted to dispose of . . . I mix it up, feeding both F/T and live, partly as a matter of convenience since my mouse colonies "almost" produce enough for my needs, and partly because I read in Kathy Love’s corn snake book that constricting live prey helps snakes maintain muscle tone and may avoid egg binding . . . Right now I’ve just about finished feeding the baby corns I just hatched, and part of them have had live ones and part F/T, and their feeding responses were pretty automatic. The one exception, the "runt" (who hatched last and was last to shed, with some difficulty), has only had very small F/T newborn pinkies; he gave it a go with a slightly larger live one, but then spit it out . . .
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| 08/24/09 09:40pm |
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