I know I've heard that reptiles don't have feelings, but I was wondering, are kingsnakes able to recognize people? I say that because I had a situation once when my friend was over. My kingsnake was on the floor and my friend kept poking the snake in a scary way. The snake became nervous and curled up, rattled her tail, and striked at my friend. I was on the opposite side, and when I got nearer to my snake, it didn't do anything, but it calmed down. Then when my friend approached the snake, it tried to strike at her again. But then when I tried to pick her up she didn't show any aggression towards me, only my friend. (I bought her as a newborn, I had her for 6 months now. I am the ONLY one that handles her; everyone is else scared of her.)
Reptile & Amphibian Forums
Welcome to kingsnake.com's message board system. Here you may share and discuss information with others about your favorite reptile and amphibian related topics such as care and feeding, caging requirements, permits and licenses, and more. Launched in 1997, the kingsnake.com message board system is one of the oldest and largest systems on the internet.
Weird Question
Replies (2)
I don't have any scientific documents to present you but another personal experience. First off, it wouldn't be too surprised by a snake distinguising people shortly after an encounter. What has impressed me though is a story I heard about our local racer population. Racers are endangered in the state and we've done a log of work to research and protect them including implanting internal radio transmitters into select snakes. The crews doing the field work change significantly between trips but there is one person who is on every trip and it really seems like the recognize him immediately. When two or three people surround a snake to catch it some of the snakes that have been caught before always have their eyes focused directly on this one guy. It's like they know he's the one responsible for their capture and recognize him as "that guy" who means bad news. Racers are very intuitive snakes though -- a lot of people give them credit as being the smartest.
Lately, as I mentioned in a recent post, it seems that our kingsnake recognizes me and acts differently when I'm around.
If you could get inside a snake's head for just ten seconds, how do you think you'd end up describing that experience?
Weird?
Disappointing?
Scary?
-----
0.1 Lampropeltis Getula Floridana
1.0 Elaphe Guttata Slowinskii
