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Does a snake have owner recognition?

HoganD87

HoganD87

New member
I just got my snake about 3 weeks ago, and hes about 5 weeks old. When I hold him it seems as if hes always trying to slither his way out of my hands and onto the floor. He seems to be getting better. Like if I let him go he will sometimes go right into the other hand and stay there.

So basically my question is in a nutshell is...


Will the snake treat me any different than everyone else because I am the one that feeds him every few days and holds him every day?

Will he stop trying to escape or is that just because he's a snake and it will never go away?

share your stories.
 
I'd say scent recognition is possible more than owner recognition, but I wouldn't have thought that would cause any problems with other people handling, i mean i would have thought it was human scent it needed to get used to rather than an individuals smell.

Also I'd say your snake will definately calm down and be far more handlable as it grows, obviously when its still a hatchling in the wild being scared of everything would be an evolutionary advantage. As your snake gets bigger and grows more confident handling will be less stressfull for the little guy.
 
I agree. Snakes will be more convertible with you than any of your mates just because it remembers your scent and it knows you are not going to hurt it. One of my pythons is totaly fine with me but will strike at anyone else because it is a rescue snake and now trusts me.
 
mele2511 said:
I agree. Snakes will be more convertible with you than any of your mates just because it remembers your scent and it knows you are not going to hurt it. One of my pythons is totaly fine with me but will strike at anyone else because it is a rescue snake and now trusts me.
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I'm hoping that scent plays a bigger role that scent, and have gotten into the habit of having eveyone in the family who touches the snakes use the same sanitizer lotion, so we all have at least that in common.
 
Mine seem to go by scent. As a rule, they're much more relaxed being handled by me than by others. I always wash my hands before handling them, and if I use a different soap to my usual brand, they seem more wary when I go to pick them up.

And the only time I've been bitten by a couple of mine, is when I went to pick them up after handling raw garlic about an hour beforehand. I figure it was masking my "personal" scent completely.

I think it's a good idea for your family to stick to the same sanitizer - it's possible that the snake will come to associate it with being gently handled.
 
I think that it may be scent recognition in combonation with experience recognition. That is, I think that the snake can probably sense an experienced snake handler from an inexperienced one. I noticed that when my mother and friends went to a reptile show together and were handling Kel for the first time, we passed her among ourselves to handle. She was very calm in my hands, very hyperactive in my friend's hands, and a little jumpy in my mother's. I had been handling snakes frequently, my mom hadn't handled any for a while but had experience with them, and it was my friends' near-first time. Kel's attitude reflected that. Also, a snake may learn to trust one scent more than another because it knows it won't be harmed by one. The more it is held by different people, the more accustomed it will probably become to new scents. These are just my ideas, but from my experiences they've proved to be pretty valid.
 
jazzgeek said:
Good point - and I'd venture to say that some sort of "fear pheromones" might come into play here.

regards,
jazz
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Not just that but hormones as well.
I keep and raise gophers, bulls, and pines and I will tell you most of them do not like being around my girlfriend. They hiss and hollar at her. I recently did a hands on show at a nature preserve. The naturalist talked to me about a bull snake they had there. It wasn't handable to her and they got this animal for educational purposes. She asked me to look at it. I placed the snake in my hands and it was gentle and limp in my hands. It was like any of my snakes towards me. But when she held the snake it hissed. I asked her if I could take this snake in the main area to show my girl. Well as I took snake near her it hissed. She held the animal in her hands and threw a fit. I took it back and it was fine.

For some reason some snakes are very sensitive to people. We figured that both my girl and the naturalist were in their mid 30s and it could be a hormonal issue.
 
Well, I think snakes naturally want to get away from people if they are not used to being handled.

Personally, most of my snakes are pretty chilled no matter who is holding them. I do have one though that gets very tense and jumpy if anyone other than me holds him, but this could be because I am more experienced at handling than others who hold him. He is also a naturally edgy and nervous snake and does not have the tolerance levels that the others have...lol

But yes, to a certain extent I do think they "recognize" us. When my little guys see me in the room they come out from hiding and prepare to be fed, when anyone else goes into the room, they do not come out...lol
 
tricksterpup said:
Not just that but hormones as well.
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Definitely. No other explanation for this "vicious" MBK I have - sweet as a kitten with me and other females, but will bite men without any hesitation.

If they are getting used to one particular person's scent and recognising that, surely that IS owner recognition...? Just not visual recognition. I think scent combined with reactions to different types of handling (experienced vs. unexperienced as mentioned above) provides most of the recognition we have between a snake and its owner.

Although using the same brand of hand sanitiser might provide a sort of scent "baseline" for a snake, I still believe four different hands washed with the same product would smell different enough to a snake for them to distinguish between them. I don't think we can even begin to imagine how sensitive to slight differences in smell an animal such as a snake is, and even when we remove some of our scent and try to mask the rest of it, I'm convinced they'd know.
 
Dont know about recognition but I reckon they may get jealous! Was handling my garter last night when saw one head pop out of a hide and watch me, then my other popped her head out too, both peering intently at me for ages whilst the garter went about oblivious, they were givin me a "whats goin on whos this then stare" lol
 
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