Normally across the board, keepers tend to no understand what neonates feed on. They do tend to feed on very large items, compared to adults.

And yes, in nature they can do silly things and fail. I have watched snakes attempt to swallow and fail with very large items. Once on my porch, I found a spotted night snake that swallowed a large gecko and died swallowing it.

Found a baby water snake with a hold on an adult leopard frogs leg. Had a three food water snake in captivity that attempted to eat my pet bull frog, the frog simply swatted the snake and that was it. A friend found a black racer doing the death roll, when he investigated, he found a short tailed snake had a hold of the racers head and was constricting it. Again in my yard, I scared a adult jack rabbit and it ran by a pallet of tile, an averaged sized gopher snake grabbed the rabbit and hung on. The rabbit was kicking and twisting and jumping. that snake was all twisted up. The snake let go and was fine. It looked like the snake would get itself snapped in half.

So yes, snakes can do silly things and sometimes they die or get injured doing them.

Back to captivity, the problem with neonates feeding on large prey items is easy to understand, In nature the snake can go to the temps and humidity it needs, in captivity, its either there or not, if not, neonates reguir large prey items. In most cases, keepers keep snakes in very average conditions, which means, they can only perform in an average way.

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