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I don’t know what these are but I find them in my hognose snakes water bowel. They look like eye lashes. Has anyone ever seen these? If so what are they? I have never seen one move. Any help would be great. Thanks.

JIM

That is a first for me. Hopefully they are dead. Most snakes soak to get rid of parasites. I do not have your answer, but I would take a few in water to a local high school after school gets out and ask a science teacher to use a microscope. If it is a worm type of creature I would use panacure or injections of ivermectin from the vet. Maybe the science teacher might have an idea also. Or just take them and the snake to a vet... But I am sure you are just seeing who knows before that step. I recently received a hog who had mites. The warning sign was the animal was eating, but not gaining weight. Also the water dish had white stuff floating at the top.
Good Luck
Nick

I've seen that before with mine too...someone once told me it was shed tongue skin, which I took with a huge grain of salt...I'd be interested to hear what it actually is.
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Erik Williams

fattailed geckos, western hognoses, and a bunch of postage stamps.
Contact me
www.chicagoherp.org
Chicago Herpetological Society

Funny, I thought this would make an interesting topic for discussion on the ball python forum three years ago. Boy, was I mistaken. Big yawn.

forums.kingsnake.com/viewarch.php?id=237357,237357&key=2003

It's hard to be absolutely certain from your photo, but those do look like tongue sheds. I've see them fairly frequently deposited in water bowls from snakes that have darkly pigmented tongues, like northern water snakes and bull snakes.

By the way, on a wild-caught eastern hognose which I hadn't yet treated for parasites I assumed I was seeing tongue sheds in the water bowl until I looked in its mouth and saw flukes. Made me wonder if I hadn't been looking closely enough at the things in the water bowl.

If anybody wants to read that short note by Carl Kaulfeld that I referred to in the old post, I'd be happy to post it.

-Joan

>>I don’t know what these are but I find them in my hognose snakes water bowel. They look like eye lashes. Has anyone ever seen these? If so what are they? I have never seen one move. Any help would be great. Thanks.
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>>JIM
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>>

In the 2000 edition of Reptiles magazine on hognoses the author talks about seeing tongue sheds in the water bowl of his western hogs and not knowing what they were untill a vet friend told him hognoses shed their tongues. I believe they are the only snake to do this. Kevin Fisher

The first time I ever saw those was a few years back,when I had a western hog.Now I see it with my easterns. Jeff

indigos do... ratsnakes and kings do..., maybe all snakes.

I saw those in one of my hognose's water bowls and took it to a vet. He told me they are just individual scales that curl up when they are in the water for a while. I thought they were parasites but he said they are shed scutes.

tell your vet I have pulled tongue sheds off indigos and fl. kings and red ratsnakes but can't say I have ever see one come off my pines. and I think your vet had a good theory, but it is just a theory.

If they are tounge sheds, then why are there three of them in the photo? Do Jim's hoggies have three tounges or does he only change the water after three sheds? Seems like that proves the vets theory about curled up scale sheds. Or am I missing something?

Hisy

if your snakes sheds are whole or complete and you have shed in the bowl then theres your proof or maybe the tongue sheads split off the tongue and therefore sumit 4 quaters (two for each fork) or you can dig one out and onfold it and see its true shape.they don't roll off like bodyshed...JB

>>If they are tounge sheds, then why are there three of them in the photo?......................

Visualize the tongue of a snake as a Y. Can you see how it might come apart in three sections?

I will tell my vet. He had a hypothesis, not a theory. A theory has been tested by scientific experimentation over a long period of time. Like the cell theory.

Joe Bob,your probably right! Kevin Fisher

>>I don’t know what these are but I find them in my hognose snakes water bowel. They look like eye lashes. Has anyone ever seen these? If so what are they? I have never seen one move. Any help would be great. Thanks.
>>
>>JIM
>>
>>

I keep everything from hognoses, corn snakes, rat snakes, kingsnakes, ball pythons, etc. and see stuff like that in the dishes from time to time which as others have mentioned could probably a tongue shed. I see them easy in the water dishes of snakes I have that have dark colored tongues. Those with light colored tongues (like albinos) they are not quite as easily noticed in the water dish.
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PHWyvern

At least now I don’t have to worry about them being some kind of parasite. Thanks for all the help. I learn something new all the time about my snakes!!

JIM

I found these tongue sheds in my female eastern hogs water dish.