Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Common belief is that snakes that are missing their egg tooth won't pip, and while this must certainly be true, from my experience, this condition is very rare (in fact, I've never encountered it). Last year I posted what I believed to be the second most common reason for a cb Indigo Snake to be unable to pip its egg (a perfectly spherical shell). In a perfectly spherical shell, the baby snake has no internal structure to hold on to, and therefore can't obtain the leverage needed to cut the egg.

The number one most common reason for a baby Indigo Snake to be unable to pip (in my experience) is a serious skeletal deformity, such as a kinked spine. If an egg of mine which is normally shaped isn't pipped and the snake inside is full term and dead, there is a good probability that the snake inside has a serious deformity. Minor imperfections don't seem to have an impact on the snake's ability to pip.

For some reason, a baby snake that isn't straight has a much more difficult time cutting the egg. There could be a variety of possible explanations for this. Perhaps the position of the snake inside the egg is different, or perhaps the movement of the snake inside the egg is impaired.

This picture only indirectly relates to this topic, but it goes to show what kind of trouble a prenatal baby snake with a kink can get into. As you all might surmise, I cut a hole in this egg because it hadn't pipped with the rest of the clutch. Several hours later to my relief a head popped out. Two days later when it dawned on me that the head had not moved, I poked it with my finger and found the baby snake to be dead. I would normally be likely to just throw such an egg away but I was curious about why the baby couldn't get out after I saw it alive, so I cut the shell away today and cleaned off the dead baby snake for a few photographs.

For those of you that haven't experienced it, after a baby Indigo Snake pips the egg, it stays inside for about a day before it detaches from its umbilical cord. If a person tried to pull a hatchling out of its egg just after pipping, the baby would have its guts torn out and would die. This baby (notice the obvious visible kink) got its head tangled in the umbilical cord. In fact, the umbilical makes a tight knot around the snake's head. It looks like the baby snake was literally strangled to death.

A baby snake inside the egg with no kink wouldn't have its head in a position to be caught in the umbilical cord like this.

Robert.

Hey Robert,
very interesting post. I have a clutch of 4 texas eggs this year. Two of them hatched out a week ago. I waited a few days and noticed one of them was starting to collapse. I decided to slit it open and see what was up. The snake inside would move to the touch so I left it alone. After a couple of days it still had not emerged and I noticed it was no longer moving and the egg was starting to smell. I tossed it out but now I wish I would have examined it for kinks.

The last egg is still plump as ever and nearing day 100. I'll just let it ride and see what happens. I was incubating at 76 degrees this year.
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Paul Weaver
Carolina Herps

Hi Robert, thanks for the information. It's good to have you back on this forum. Steve

Hi Robert,
-thought you'd like to know Tom and Rita are doing just fine ( do you remember those names, hahahahaha?).

daveb
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in the light, you will find the road...

Hi Robert,

I have gotten in the practice of helping an egg once they make the first effort. In your case it would not help but here is my process. Once I have a slit from a snake I take fingernail scissors and cut a hole in the top of the egg. I use a modified technique used by brain surgeons. I insert the scissors into the slit and pull up until I can see the bottom of the scissor through the flexible egg shell. I cut a hole but since I can see the bottom of the scissor against the inside of the shell by pulling the scissor toward me I can cut a hole without cutting any blood vessels.

Once an egg has slit I move it to its own container to finish the process and the intrusion is mostly ignored by the snake and will exit the egg on its own timeline. I increase the temperature once a clutch is starting to slit by 4 Degrees F. It is usually the largest neonate whom is last to exit the egg.
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"Life without risk is to merely exist."

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"Life without risk is to merely exist."

The tissue you see is all extraembryonic.

Here is another photo from the other side. There is a mass of tissue that is usually left inside the egg shell when the baby departs. It includes a narrow, cord-end (what I would analogize to an umbilical cord in mammals) that was attached to the snake, and at the other end is a fat mass of tissue that usually has a fleshy character and has visible blood vessels (what I would analogize to a placenta in mammals). You can see the "umbilicus" here exiting from the ventral side of the snake. This umbilical cord would detach at the site it exits from the snake about a day after the animal pips (but sometimes up to two or three days later).

Since there is a narrow umbilical cord section with a fat fleshy mass at the end, it has the possibility of being knotted around the snake when the cord-end is still attached to the animal. If the knot is tightened, the fleshy mass can't pull through. The umbilical cord here wraps around the snake's neck, and then is actually tightened around the fleshy "placental" mass. It was really tight. I don't know if you can perceive just how tight the knot was by these pictures.

I also can't imagine how it got so wrapped around this snake's neck in such a complex manner.

This strangulation event was very unusual. I have had other unpipped eggs with dead baby snakes that had kinks near the tail end. It seems to me that a serious kink pretty much anywhere on the body must somehow impair the normal movement of the animal inside and this makes it difficult for the animal to cut the egg.

I didn't preserve the specimen but I do have a several more photos in case you would like to see them.

Robert.