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Staring

C

Cyntax

New member
Does anyone else's corn snake just stare at them? Not moving, no tougne flicking, no recoil or shying away, just completely still and just stares no matter how close to the cage you get?

Loki has now gotten into this habit of hanging his head out of his hide and just staring at me. I could be fideling with cage stand or something and he still doesn't move at all.

Is this normal? Does it mean anything? I've only had him for 3 days.

Also, are there any good web links or books that have corn snake behavior information? Like what all the body language means? I have the corn snake manual and its pretty good, but I desire more :)

Here is a pic of the deadly stare:

stare.jpg
 
To be honest, Ive kind of wondered about this behavior myself. I have seen all of my corns do this on occasion and my personal feeling is that they dont see overly well. I sometimes feel that its only the larger or more rapid (like a struggling mouse) movements that they pick up on.
Most movements in their environment they can sense with their jacobs organ (Im doing this from memory, so this might be the wrong organ ;) ) which is in their jaw and is very sensitive to vibrations. I suppose if they can detect you with their eyes, but cant feel your vibration, they may be sitting still to try and sense them.

This is all theory and conjecture, so I wouldnt bet money on anything Ive said here. :p
 
The Jacobson's Organ is actually in the roof of the mouth, I believe. It is used for "smell."

I'm not sure what organ, if any, is used to detect vibrations.
 
he always wins!

I too have been on the end of the staring contest. My snake always wins, go figure.

Seriously though- he does it when I'm close to the tank but have *stopped* moving. So if I'm moving around, he continues about his business. It's probably a defense mechanism- the big scary predator has stopped moving and therefore is probably stalking the prey now, so he had better stay still so I can't see him just like he can't see me when I'm still.

dara
 
If my snake's out in her cage and I approach she'll often just stop moving and stare. I got the feeling and assumed she was feeling threatened by me and froze up like small rodents do. They're camoflaged in the wild (not so much on newspaper substrate) so stopping all movement would be a pretty good way to keep from being seen. Do they have a lot of natural predators in the wild, though?
 
stuart said:
It means he wants to eat you
Click to expand...

Lol. Watch that happen someday. What would the headlines read...

"Man eaten by baby cornsnake..."
"Snakes eats prey 100 times the size of its girth..."

Oh, the possibilities.

:laugh01:
 
Animal planet of course!! Oh, and she likes Stargate......must be the snakes in the bad guys...
 
Lol. A snake is a snake. Even metaphoically I guess. That's funny. What about the Steve Irwin show? Or does she think she's just a big show-off?
 
She thinks he's a big idiot!! She thinks Jeff Corwin is cute, and little more sensible too.
 
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