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Can a Snake Forget How to Constrict?

R

ReclusiveDemon

New member
I've had my Corn Snake Jasper for a few years now, and he/she's very well behaved, never attempted to bite me, or even struck a defensive posture (has pooped on me though :laugh: ). My snake seems to have a very passive way of eating. I feed frozen/thawed always, and I believe the pet store did so as well. I dump a mouse in there, in a few seconds he will investigate, and then he will begin to nom on it, often tail-first.

Is this normal? If he were to be presented live prey, would he be able to hunt it? I don't think it'll ever be necessary; I just want to see if my snake has been "broken".
 
I have a few adults that don't constrict either. They know the prey is not going to fight back so they just eat. Nothing wrong with him.
 
There is nothing wrong with your boy. Funny how we never ask ourselves if our pet dogs are capable of taking down a deer.
If he eats, sheds and poops he is just fine!! :)
 
starsevol said:
There is nothing wrong with your boy. Funny how we never ask ourselves if our pet dogs are capable of taking down a deer.
If he eats, sheds and poops he is just fine!! :)
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That's an interesting question. xD I didn't think there was anything wrong with him, I meant broken sort of in the sense that a horse is broken, as in some of his instinctual behavior is suppressed.
 
Snakes are cold-blooded animals and energy is hard to come by - they can't just eat to get it as warm-blooded animals do, they need to be at the right temperature as well. It makes sense that they don't expend energy unnecessarily.

Yours has learned that defrosted food doesn't need to be constricted so he doesn't bother. I hesitate to say that anything a Corn does is "clever", but it's a positive behaviour adjustment, rather than a "broken" negative one.
 
Have you ever tried the zombie mouse dance? Take a really hot freshly thawed mouse, hold the tail with tongs and move it around, a little jerky like a live mouse. many corns fed F/T all their lives will attack and constrict a zombie mouse.........like this!
 

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ReclusiveDemon said:
That's an interesting question. xD I didn't think there was anything wrong with him, I meant broken sort of in the sense that a horse is broken, as in some of his instinctual behavior is suppressed.
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I wasn't trying to be snippy, promise!
I just think it is strange that humans seem to expect one thing from dogs and another from snakes. Probably because snakes have been kept as pets only recently in history as opposed to dogs.
 
my male will just casually sniff at and eat if i simply throw a mouse on the floor in front of him, but if i dangle it, he will nail it and wrap it like hes not eaten for months, lol.
 
I have several that WILL NOT eat a moving mouse. Maybe with enough weeks of hunger they would, but I don't "need them" to constrict. Others will snatch a f/t mouse and roll around the cage. Different personalities, but shy snakes are just fine by me.
 
Isn't constriction good for exercise?
I used to feed live because I wanted my snake to get the full experience and exercise from "hunting". Needless to say, I learned from my mistake so now I do the zombie dance... which is fun... the more I wiggle the mouse, the harder the snake constricts until I decide when the mouse is "dead".
Sure beats the mouse escaping and the snake trying to chase him around while the mouse fights for his life and tries to bite... a sort of traumatizing situation for snake, snake-owner and mouse alike...

But I digress... my question is, how much exercise do corn snakes really need?

Mine was getting fat so I feed him every 3 weeks now and make sure he does plenty of constricting.
Is there a discernible difference between a fat, "spoiled" snake and a lean, muscular one?
 
This relates to the dog analogy because nothing's more frustrating than a dog owner who can't seem to grasp how badly overweight his dog really is.
 
I have a couple of very inactive males and I control their weight with feeding frequency and size. I can't imagine that a couple of minutes' tug-of-war once every 2-3 weeks, would really make that much difference to their muscle tone.

A fat snake feels flabby. Even when they're tensed up and moving around, they still feel kind of squishy. A toned Corn will feel softer when at rest, but will feel much more solid as they move. A morbidly obese Corn (and there have been some horrendous pics of rescues over the years) just looks like a sock filled with jello. I should imagine they feel like that to handle as well, poor things.

You can also look at the size of their head, which seems to grow at a natural rate regardless of how over- or under-fed the snake is. If the head looks disproportionately small for the body, then the snake is likely to be overweight. A disproportionately large head can indicate that the snake is underweight.
 
7legion77 said:
Is there a discernible difference between a fat, "spoiled" snake and a lean, muscular one?
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There can be a HUGE difference. Males are prone to get fat, but females WILL with too much food. Here's an amel I breeder loaned that was overfed for two years:
312hgyv.jpg

This snake is downright squishy. I have her on about a 50% Munson plan, but very little weight loss so far.

This is a corn snake of the same age with a good weight to breed:
2d8s8li.jpg


This one I would want to put a few grams on before I would breed her. Not thin, but enough so that a clutch could make her bony. For my tastes, this would be a perfect build for a male:
1zluq00.jpg


Here are two corns collected out of the wild, hunting must have been good:
xo466g.jpg

More often than not, I find them much thinner than this.

Agree with Bitsy, I don't think spending 30 seconds constricting a mouse is much exercise. These creatures roam and burn calories in the wild that they simply don't in captivity. Constricting is surely better than nothing, but I find the ones who seem to constantly crawl the cage (like the sunrise in pic #3, she's only under a hide after a meal) keep better "figures." I think handling helps them exercise as well, though with larger collections, you simply can't. And some animals simply don't appreciate it. I've thought a lot about an enclosure that would "make them" more active.
 
Hatching eggs

diamondlil said:
Have you ever tried the zombie mouse dance? Take a really hot freshly thawed mouse, hold the tail with tongs and move it around, a little jerky like a live mouse. many corns fed F/T all their lives will attack and constrict a zombie mouse.........like this!
Click to expand...

We have a female very similar in coloration to the 2nd picture in your post. She was bred to a male who is very similar in coloration to the 1st picture in your post. Any idea how to determine the color combination of the babies? We have 3 hatchlings so far and hopefully a few more soon.
 
Nanci said:
Or after he has taken hold of the mouse, grab the tail and pull back a little!
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Or 'tickle them' on their back or tummy if they constrict like half a loop, they surely are gonna make some more loops around the mouse than.
 
7legion77 said:
Isn't constriction good for exercise?
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Good point. I know a lot of people say this, because I guess Kathy wrote it in her book? But- if a snake gets exercise from constricting, then I would get exercise from lifting my fork to my mouth, so would be super-skinny from all that exertion!

It just doesn't make sense.
 
mrtomo said:
We have a female very similar in coloration to the 2nd picture in your post. She was bred to a male who is very similar in coloration to the 1st picture in your post. Any idea how to determine the color combination of the babies? We have 3 hatchlings so far and hopefully a few more soon.
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If they are both anery, (and one not charcoal), you'll get aneries. If they have a different recessive gene giving them a similar coloration, you could get all normals, unless one parent was heterozygous or "het" for that gene. If you post the parents, I bet we can tell you. What color are the babies so far?
 
Nanci said:
But- if a snake gets exercise from constricting, then I would get exercise from lifting my fork to my mouth, so would be super-skinny from all that exertion!
.
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:laugh::laugh::laugh:
 
I do think relatively constricting costs more energy than lifitng a fork... yet I do think constricting prey won't seriously tone a snake. In preparation for the breeding season I let the females do about three 'snake crunches' once or twice a week (dangle from hand by holding tail with one loop and let them come up to your hand). It does at least show how toned/strong they are if it does not help... there are noticable differences.
 
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