Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I recently adopted a Cali. King Snake. When holding my Cali. King Snake today, she started opening her vent slightly. Is there a reason for this? Is she nervous or is this common for Female King Snakes? She is 4 years old. I've read somewhere that she is farting on me, which snakes do in defense if they feel threatened, it's a precursor to musking a predator, so they open their vents in mimic of musking. Is this a defensive farting? Or she is getting ready to musk on me and if so, what would I see, would it be wet like she is peeing on me or have a strong smell? What does musking mean? What is the diff. between musking or peeing? Or maybe nothing was going to happen to me, maybe she was just mimicing or farting?? Do Snakes Fart? I don't know, all I do know is I put her down quickly so she wouldn't pee/spray/musk on me. Any suggestions? Ever hear of this?

I will address all 100 questions at once here...LOL!

Yes, snake's "musk" when they feel threatened, and in many cases, this doesn't take much, especially when first captured. If it musks, it will look just like watery whitish pee/poop mixed together, although sometimes it is just the clearish liquid that is expelled. They usually do this in conjunction with a few flicks of the tail to disperse it all around on the offender. And yes, as the term implies, it is pretty repulsive smelling, some types of snakes are WAY worse than others too.

This makes perfect sense though, because in the wild, if it wasn't fairly potent, it wouldn't make much of a deterrent to predators and such.

In any case, they simply do this sometimes when feeling a little nervous, and this behavior usually stops after it becomes used to being gently handled over a fairly short period of time.

~Doug
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"Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!"

So what your basically saying is that it's a wet fart. LOL
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Steve W.

Do you mean a "Shart" ?