Quote:
Originally Posted by bitsy
If a snake is cannibalistic, they won't differentiate between blood relations and other snakes. I don't believe that any snake recognises "family".
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Oh, they do have an excellent sense of smell, so I think they do learn to recognize things by their smell. Humans who are safe, snakes who are related and hence safe-ish.. Many animals use their sense of smell to determine who is a sibling, and even remember the same nesting site. And there's of course there's the social behavior that has been demonstrated in some snakes, which would suggest they do recognize a non-threat, probably by sense of smell too.
I think animal behavior (human too - often!) is all about benefits. Well, the whole evolution is based on the idea that who has best traits for reproducing as well as possible. I think the most simple example of beneficial social behavior is reproduction. The second most simple would be "safety in numbers". I think these two can be seen in snakes.
On the topic of enjoying being handled, I don't think it's completely impossible. Enjoying some feeling is one of the "rewards" that guide animal action, for example eating things and having a full stomach feels nice. We know that snakes do sometimes prefer to spend time in close contact with other snakes, and they do sometimes prefer to spend time on a source of warmth. I would guess these probably have some positive feedback to encourage these, which would also mean they might sometimes enjoy being in close contact with a nice and warm human, too. And, I heard someone has a corn who likes to have his chin rubbed?
I seem to belong to the pro-handling group. I think it's a good opportunity to visually inspect the snake and see if it behaves as usual, and it gives the snake new stimuli and some exercise.