IQ and education are two separate things though having lots of both definitely works...but if one is low, it will affect the other to some extent. But people with low IQ can still learn things. The local reptile association I am part of in my area, there is a mentally handicapped lady who is pretty knowledgeable about reptiles though sometimes it takes her a few minutes to 'absorb' new information.
Anyway, spay and neuter may be terms she never heard of before, but the concept of 'fixing' a cat or dog so it can't have babies, may not be new to her. I still can't remember which one is for females and which is for male cats or dogs.
it is possible for a large species of python to swallow a human...though definitely not a ball python.
In the situation you described I would have explained that most pythons are not able to swallow a full grown human though the larger species could swallow a small human, either a child or very short human but they are much more likely to kill a human via constriction than actually ate them. Again you can point out it is very rare.
You can always use a 4' rope and tell her to wrap it around your body and try and 'squeeze' you with it. Unless you are very skinny, probably won't be very easy. But if she has 25' of rope she certainly can wrap it around your torso many times and have a much better chance of squeezing you all over.
As for her father who told her pythons swallow people you can say her father is probably right on many things but again explain very few pythons can swallow people, so he's only correct with maybe two or three species of pythons. Not the other hundred or so species that make up that class of snake. Just as there are many kinds of cats, both big and small but all are generally called cats..with great cats to describe the big wild cats like lions and tigers. Same is true with pythons and boas. There big and small python and boas. A house cat isn't going to be a danger to people, even if they can scratch and bite, they are not likely to eat you. A lion however, most certainly is capable of killing and eating a human.
Sometimes comparing to animals they do understand, works.
Oh and when you say this lady is 'sheltered' does that mean home schooled and has no internet or TV? Then again she watched at least one movie....
Definitely should explain that the movie Python vs Boa is a movie, the snakes are props, and animechtronics or whatever the robotic special effects are called. Besides, in that movie, the snakes in questions were genetically engineered to be bigger than was natural for those snakes to get...and thus don't exist naturally. Besides, boas and pythons couldn't interbreed anyway. Be like breeding a human to a chimpanzee. Or a bird to a mammal when you consider one is an egg layer, the other a live bearer.
As for the dog breeding methods..perhaps she saw a video of an assisted breeding...where the breeders do help the dogs get things in the right place. There are such vids on youtube. Maybe that is why she thought dog breeding meant humans had to make sure things get done.
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PHLdyPayne
Beth, you just smile, pat em on the head and tell em to have a nice day as you're walking away.
