"i havent actually owned mambas yet, i do have experience with a lot of other venomous though. from what i had heard the jamesons were like the calmer of the mambas also the least harmful. since i have heard other wise i am going to get greens first. it was a tossup between the two of them. im not ready for blacks yet. thanks for your help!"



Your best bet for a calm mamba is a long term captive (not necessarily a captive raised) Eastern green (angusticeps). My captive born Eastern is absolutely fearsome because of his powerful feeding response. He has learned that humans = food so he comes out snapping for his dinner at any keeper who approaches. All of my wild caught rehab Easterns are absolutely calm and docile, though they weren't necessarily so when they first came in.



I've rehabbed a number of mambas from all species and the Easterns turn out the calmest. Westerns can get fairly calm also but they seem to be a little less predictable - I'm not sure as I've only worked with a few Westerns. Many Jamesons never do calm down. Black mambas do get amazingly calm, but it can take quite awhile and some will retain a dangerous feeding response. Especially if you teach them bad feeding habits like handing them mice on tongs.



Please be careful when purchasing a freshly wild caught imported mamba. They absolutely need veterinary attention when they come in, and if you aren't prepared to go hands-on to provide this, please purchase a long term captive animal instead that has had fecal exams and no recent capture injuries.



At the moment I have too many &^%$@ mambas because a lot of the capture injury cases get dumped on me from the local importers. I am considering finding them somewhere else to live, but my standards for who I'll send snakes to are extremely high. A lot of zoos can't even meet them, let alone private keepers. Also their vet bills tend to exceed their actual value so there is no way I could sell them for anything close to what I spent to save them. So I guess I'm kinda stuck with'em. Oh well, there's worse things in life than a house full of too much mamba. LOL



More details on the rehab mamba cases at http://www.snakegetters.com/demo/vet/

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