just how "smart" are they?

So ever since the mite infestation I have been extremy paranoid about my snakes...so much so that I've been feeding everyone in their vivs (for what reason I have no idea...bear with me), and today I put kiyos mouse in her viv on her paper plate (again...bear with me) and she found it, and started eating it tail end first....me thinking "greeeeat..."... But she spit it out and went to the nose and started again...are they smart enough to know the difference? "Hey this isn't right...let me start over" or do they condition that way?

Apparently yours is ! LOL

Mine will only spit it back out if they can't get by the mouse's hips.

Yeah I was watching her thinking I was going to have to help her, but she was only noming on one leg...got to the tail and said newp

Past 2 times Cheesy tried to start form the middle lol

She always figures out she is doing it wrong, but hell this last time she not only tried to start from the middle but ate suspended from the plants. She stayed dangling until she finished it then disappeared into her hide lol

my babies have been notoriously bad about eating their pinkies tail first

None of mine care much, or aren't that smart! They start wherever they sniff first. They do move around to an end if they start with the middle, though. I give them a C+ for overall eating performance!

Most of my corns are smart enough to know which end is the head and which is the tail, and some will even inspect their meal before starting in on it to make sure it's going down the right way.
I dip the hind ends of my thawed feeder mice in a little bit of vitamin powder, and one of my yearlings really likes the smell of the vitamins. I thought she just liked eating the mice tail first, but i tried powdering the face of her meal instead and she ate it head first like a normal snake. If i don't powder her mouse at all, she'll pout a bit before eating and eat a lot slower.

I also have hognose snakes, and one of them is big enough to eat hoppers but i prefer to feed her pinks because she tends to eat mice from the middle, attempting to fold them in half and swallow them sideways. I figure pinks are a lot safer.

both of mine will eat from either end and have no problems at all getting it down either way. I have noticed though that Hades will investigate the SECOND pinkie (this is after hoovering the first) and stick his head in the pinkies mouth then eat it head first. Spec usually does start in the middle. She grabs from the middle and then moves then adjusts it to one of the ends. She vary rarely starts from an end. I really love watching them eat!

GoRabbitGo, what kind of vitamin powder do you use? If your little one enjoys it, maybe some other babies will like it. Might be a good thing to try with a few non-feeders

I find that mine will usually eat from either end when they're eating pinkies, but they almost always eat head first once the mice have fur.