Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was remarking to my partner (tolerant but not enthusiastic about my snake hobby) about the different habits of my snakes concerning where they choose to do their toilet. The pyros without exception all choose a spot as far away from their nest as possible to poop at. The bulls on the other hand tend to poop in their moss hides, or often near their nests. Yuck! My partner said that bulls are home invaders; they go into a burrow home and eat the residents and then take a nice nap, later pooping the victims out in the living room. The pyros on the other hand are crevice dwellers who do not venture far from their rock outcrop homes, generally lurking for their prey, and do not want to poop up their living rooms. I am pleasantly surprised that my partner has such insight into the habits of these creatures even though he is only politely interested. That's more than I can say for myself when he tries to engage me in a conversation about world events, particularly anything to do with war or politics! LOL!
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Bob
Pyromaniac AKA Greatballzofire
Keeping cats allows man to cohabitate with tigers. Keeping reptiles allows man to cohabitate with dinosaurs.

I've seen plenty of lizards that regularly poop in one place, but not so much snakes. Interesting observation. My kings seem to go wherever...so do my pythons.
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We wouldn't have 6 and a half billion people if you had to be beautiful to get laid.
1.3 African House Snakes
3.2 reticulated pythons
1 corn snake
4.3 Florida Kings
2 speckled kings
1.2 ball pythons
1 Argentine boa
1 Texas Rat Snake
1 checkered garter snake

With a name like Varanid, you should understand this one.

Varanids, thrive when given choices, and fail when kept like these snakes. WITHOUT choices.

What your snakes are telling you is, your not giving them the right choices.

Again, I work with and have worked with species after species in nature. Once you locate their permanet shelters, that is, places they spend lots of time at. They never crap there. They tend to crap closeby and often in the same spot over and over.

In captivity, its the same snakes or lizards, But they are not often given That ability to do what they do naturally.

So what your seeing is forced behavior, not natural behavior. What do you expect them to do.

Take pythons, You Box them in a cave they cannot get out of. And you expect them to do what?????????? Did you ever notice as soon as you take one out and let it crawl, it craps, hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha Varanid, use your head, think sir.

how about seeing what they do if their cage is four times their total lenght. Consider, how can you make a choice, if the cage is shorter then you are. hahahahahahahahahahahaha People are funny!

There is one thing I noticed: they don't poop in the moist hides. None of them ever have. On top of yes, but not actually down in them.

I'm still trying to figure out something sturdy enough and big enough for the big pythons to use as a moist hide >.> I can't really just build a plywood one, it won't hold up to the moisture I don't think. The large rubbermaids don't seem to be sturdy enough--I've tried it, they got tore up pretty good fairly quick. I'm trying to find someone local that works ABS plastic that could custom do something but no luck yet. Maybe metal would work, something anodized so it doesn't rust?

My colubrids tend to have big cages relative to length--I like my kings in cages about as long as they are by about 1/2 that wide. Which means I'm about to spend $$$$ on housing for them as they outgrow the CB70s. Oh well. I'm leaning towards 4x2 or 5x2s for the floridas. They certainly do use the space though, no question about that.

My big pythons I'm looking for someone that can do 10-14' cages...I think I have a source. But this damn building I'm working on getting in has to get done first and now the city's telling me one witht hat square footage has to have a permanent foundation >< Yay for adding a few grand to the cost.
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We wouldn't have 6 and a half billion people if you had to be beautiful to get laid.
1.3 African House Snakes
3.2 reticulated pythons
1 corn snake
4.3 Florida Kings
2 speckled kings
1.2 ball pythons
1 Argentine boa
1 Texas Rat Snake
1 checkered garter snake

If you look online for "poly food storage boxes" you will find white polyethylene FDA approved boxes that are extremely strong. These will hold up to any snake.

Cambro is one brand. I think Rubbermaid makes them to, but you won't see them in stores.

Use these as your moist hide. You can make a lid (pegboard works) or buy the lid and cut a hole.
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Mark

Thanks! For someone who worked in restaurants in high school and college I can't believe I didn't think of those ops:

Expensive but I'm getting one to test it out, thanks for the lead
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We wouldn't have 6 and a half billion people if you had to be beautiful to get laid.
1.3 African House Snakes
3.2 reticulated pythons
1 corn snake
4.3 Florida Kings
2 speckled kings
1.2 ball pythons
1 Argentine boa
1 Texas Rat Snake
1 checkered garter snake

A couple things that will cause interest.

one pyros are not crevice dwellers. Oh yes, they use crevices under certain conditions and even dead trees.

Something to thing about, years like this one here RE-educates them to go back to where they belong, the ground. Fires eliminate the use of marginal habitat.

But hes sorta right, pyros live in tight compact colonies, with lots and lots of individuals. So crapping in ones house would not be of an advantage.

Generally snake crap on the edge or just outside of their "turf" to tell others it is their Turf, or I am here.

Bull snakes are the same as pyros, except they have a much larger range. Which means less animals per sq ft.

Do they actually crap in their houses/homes/nests, or are what your calling those names, are NOT REALLY their homes/nests, etc.

Its my feeling, by crapping there, they are telling you its not their nest or home shelter.

Just something to think about.

To support my statement that pyros and zonatas are not rock dwellers, all you have to do is look at the total range of those species, then compare how much of that has these crevices.

The reality is, 99% of their used habitat does not have these rock situations.

These rock situations are local areas that are recognizable and collectable. Do we think thats what they do.

If you look at the animal, they are generalized in build, with not much of an adaption to crevices. Pyros a little more then zonatas, but not much.

As far as that goes, Patchnose are found in and nesting in, crevices as often as pyros, yet they are NOT rock dwellers either. Thanks for reading

"Generally snake crap on the edge or just outside of their "turf" to tell others it is their Turf, or I am here"

I wonder if that isn't just done to warn the other neighboring pyro homies to stay out of the hood, and not sell there...or ELSE!!

~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

I think we are fairly naive as to what making or scent is all about.

I think its a language. They say lots of different things, and not just to other pyros. But to everything that reads(smells) it.

For instance, we know there is interaction between prey(rodent) and predator(snake) But we are very naive as to how it works. We only look at it in a one level simple way. Kinda like catch me if you can.

While thats not wrong. There is far more to it.

I have rattlesnakes that come to feed in a certain area. The exact same area. Three different individuals do so. I feed them white mice. They have been coming for five years.

Whats funny is, they follow a very set pattern, then they leave. What happens after that is interesting. We often see pack rats smelling where the snake was in a hunting coil.

watching this gives me the thought that rodents may be able to tell individual snakes from their scents.

Snakes may well leave their history on scent trails, who they are, when they were there, and thus when they will be back.

This allows rodents to exsist with snakes, and they do. Its the naive or sick rodents that become prey. Not just any rodent.

This is the kind of stuff that intrigues me and why I continue to come back.
I also appreciate the funny/entertaining stuff but when it turns into a "Springer" episode it's momentarily entertaining but in the longterm disastrous for the well being of a good Forum. I think there are a lot of decent folks that have more respect for themselves than to be treated badly here and have moved on and we have suffered for their lack of insightful input and thoughtful questions and interactions.

My bulls are in a 4 ft by 2 ft by 2 ft screen cage. They have big moss hides and cardboard box hides, and can go in, under, over and around all these objects. They do seem to treat the big moss hide as a nest (Zoey laid her eggs in it recently) but they also poop in the corner. I check for poops and clean it regularly. They are not as messy as I may have led one to believe. They will also poop at the far edge of the cage away from the nest area. They just are not as consistent as the pyros.

But the pyros never poop in their moss hides. I thought they were crevice dwellers but can see how I made a false assumption; people routinely find them in rock formations so it is assumed that is where they always are?

There is no doubt the snakes make adjustments to captivity. When mine are hungry they signal me by making themselves visible. In the wild they would never make themselves noticeable by a human being. An exception being you seem to have some pet rattlesnakes that know you as a food source.
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Bob
Pyromaniac AKA Greatballzofire
Keeping cats allows man to cohabitate with tigers. Keeping reptiles allows man to cohabitate with dinosaurs.

Wow, that is one defensive post and one filled with all manner of assumptions.

First off, a 4 foot cage is living proof that you are not thinking about the animal.

lets see, 4ft cage, with a snake that gets over 8 feet. But most likely easily gets six feet. yup, thats plenty of space.

The question is, is that enough space to allow them to reproduce. Yup it is, Again the question was, is that enough space to allow them to make choices as to where they would behaviorally deficate? The answer is no, its not.

Now could it be. Its they cannot even leave one spot, before they hit the wall. If they are average size.

ALso your naive assumptions about they would not make themselves visable. Sorry again, I also feed Pits and they do the same thing. Once you learn them, they come out commonly.

Our most reliable feeding behaviors with pits has been in the winter.

Please sir, how about looking at animals, then the cage, from a third party viewpoint. Not from yours defending everything you do. Simply put, their natural behaviors are based on them moving in a large area. Not a four foot box.

That natural area varies in size depending on need and support, but in ALL cases is larger then your cage.

With all these reptiles, they are areas that support their needs. They have feeding places, sleeping places(shelters) basking places(both in and out), they have places to meet mates, they have places to escape heat, cold, dry and wet. Or find heat, moisture, prey, etc. These areas always are larger then your cage.

Their behaviors are based on finding and using these places, THEY ARE NOT BASED ON YOUR CAGE.

Yet there are things you could test. how about coming up with some fun tests. Like, building a large cage. Then keeping it in the small cage for everything. Then once a day, take the pits and put them in the larger cage for an hour. Then see what happens.

I have a story about pits, most likely before you were born. In the early seventies. I had a pair of het pits. They kept getting out of their cage in my snake room. They did not harm so I moved their hide/nesting box. A wooden box with a lid and a hole cut in it. It was 30 inches longs, a foot wide and a foot high. It was actually some manner of shipping box, I converted into a hide/nexting box.

Well they got out. So I put their box on the floor. Every mourning, they would leave the box and go to the window to bask in the mourning sunlite, then they would go sit between the cages that were on shelves. For some reason, they picked the higher shelves. If I fed them, they would go back to their box. if not, they stayed until dark, then went back to the box.

one funny thing, one day I cleaned out the box and went I put it back, I placed the hole on the opposite side.

When they went back, they kept looking for the hole where it was, they went around and around and around poking their heads where the HOLE was. Of course they finally found the hole and went in. Then they remembered where the hole was. Some days they did not come out.

When they deficated, they normally used an area about three meters from their box. In an opposite corner.

While there is nothing special about this, it does give some insight into what they do.

To me, snakes are the most behaviorally tolerant reptile, as you can shut them in that little box and if fed and watered, can live.

Of course there is a limit to how small the box is before they shut down. The question is, how big does the box have to be before they exhibit a full range of normal behaviors????????

In nature, there is not walls, so the maximum requirement is very large.

The REAL TRUTH IS, as you shrink their BOX, you take away natural behaviors, keep shrinking it, you keep losing behavior, Until the point they shut down.

What your seeing is fine, its real and its important, but, where you go wrong is, you say, they do or did this, you forgot to put, IN A BOX. To that statement. They crapped in their water bowl, IN A BOX. They hide all the time, IN A BOX. etc etc etc.

You do not know or what them, NOT IN A BOX. You see, what they do, NOT IN A BOX, is what they are. What they do IN A BOX, is what you FORCE them to be.

The simple key to understanding is, change the box, and compare change in behavior.

So, why don't you change their box???? This is also key. In reality, you don't for ten thousand of your own reasons that have not one thing to do with the understanding of snakes.

No room, no time, no money, insecurity about your ability to have them work in different boxes, etc. Which has nothing to do with their inherent behaviors.

So, when you say, this is what I saw. You need to add, this is what I saw in a box. Or this is what I saw in a small box. More accurately, this is what I saw in a box thats shorter then the snake is long.

A thought! in nature, in field work, to make a statement about movement. Like X individual left point A and moved to point B. The snake must travel more then its own lenght. To not travel more then its own lenght is not really moving anywhere is it????? So in all reality, your cage is like a wild snake trapped in a hole, a hole they cannot get out of.

Please think about this, and stop with your rationalizations. Please look at your statement about whats in your box, then compare it to whats in their natural box, outside. I hope you feel silly. I know I do when I think about them, in a box.

And no, I am not anti keeping them, I am just anti thinking you know them from what they do in a prison cell. Think sir

I do feel bad for the bulls in their screen cage. I am in the process of renovating a big screen gazebo so they can go outside in that during the day and have a really big area to be in.

I would love to see some actual photos of your snake habitats, especially for the larger species such as pits. This would help me with new ideas.
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Bob
Pyromaniac AKA Greatballzofire
Keeping cats allows man to cohabitate with tigers. Keeping reptiles allows man to cohabitate with dinosaurs.

Now, please look at your post, its acomplete defensive manuver.

Its not about me or how I keep snakes, not now or at anytime.

Its about the snakes you have and making judgements on their natural behavior, when they are in a tiny box.

Its very easy to understand that if you take any animal and keep taking away space, that animal will lose more behavior the more you take away. Pits get big, and do move over a larger area then pyros. So they are effected more when confined.

All I am saying to you is, those animals are doing those behaviors, not because they are different species, but instead because different species have different limitations on how much they can be confined before they Lose natural behaviors.

Plain and simple, pyros do not crap in the crack they shelter in. Bullsnakes also do not crap in their permanet shelters, that is a product of captivity and being stuck in a box that they cannot even get one body lenght away from any area. In that case, what difference does it make where they crap.

With any captive reptile, you have to give them the ability to actually make a choice before you can judge that they make choices.

Its pretty simple, If you cannot leave your toilet, then your living in your toilet. That you the person that locks them in the toilet wants to call it something else, well thats your problem, not theirs.

All you want to do is defend yourself, and then attack me. Its not about me, its not about you. Its about the animals. It does not take a genius to understand, if an animal cannot leave its own footprint, you cannot expect to see "other" behaviors.

This is not a contest between you and I, its about your snakes in a tiny box.

Its not even that you HAVE to keep them any other way. Please, just do not rationalize that that TINY FROGGIN BOX is normal to them and expect them to behavior normally in there.

The truth is, WE are not nice guys for stuffing wild animals in a tiny box. Its not against the law, so have at it. But please look at the animal and think about it, and not your own needs.

Its actually appaulling for you to think its normal for a Gophersnake to crap in its shelter or nestbox, when it cannot escapet that.

The last picture is our home, I live between those two hills. As do the above gophers, in fact, that whole area is home to thousands of gophersnakes. And all manner of morphs. Last year, we found an albino on the road, and we found stripers and other morphs too. They do well out there, big cage hey.

Their behavior is to exsist in that home, not your box. how much you take away, is totally up to you. But please, don't judge them based on Your friggin four foot screen cage. Please judge them and their beauty based on what they actually do, live in their HOME. Thanks

All you want to do is defend yourself, and then attack me. Its not about me, its not about you. Its about the animals.
Whew. Chill out, babe. I am not attacking you. Although you are a rather difficult person to communicate with, your knowledge of snakes is worth the hassle of talking with you. Thank you for posting the photos. I like the door knob one the best! Your desert home is awesome.
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Bob
Pyromaniac AKA Greatballzofire
Keeping cats allows man to cohabitate with tigers. Keeping reptiles allows man to cohabitate with dinosaurs.

Hi Bob, you are defending, then attacking.

As an example. You said, you had this in the cage, and that in the cage, etc. That is defending your setup. Then you Ask, what do you do, which is turning the direction away from you to me. Remember, what was in question was what was observed in your cage.

As I stated, its not about you or me. Its about the snakes. Simply put, any snake cannot perform in any normal fashion in a cage thats shorter then its own lenght.

You can confine them down to the base behavior of laying eggs. But they are made up of hundreds and hundreds of behaviors.

In short, You can your gophers did this and that, in a tiny cage. But its not really what they would do if they were not in that tiny cage.

The gopher you liked just robbed a quail nest. What is funny is, it digested the eggs one at a time. Cheers

Also, you use laying eggs as an example. like its a goal a lofty reach to achieve that.

No offense, but anything less then that is a total failure. The quality of reproduction and the impact on the female are what can be measured to determine good or better husbandry.

The problem is, we come at them from our point of view which is, man I hope they will breed and lay eggs, so when they do, we think, we have achieved our goals. Which is true, we achieved our goals.

how we tend to do that is, we take everything that is normal to them away. Why because we can.

Which is why it may be hard to understand me. I look at animals based on what they do in nature. Not what they do in your cage, my cage or any tupperware container.

I do not use me or any other keeper as a standard. I use the animals.

As one loner to another, I wonder about your calling yourself a loner. As one, I would think you would not care what other humans do or say.

You would care what the animals do and say. And crapping in their shelter or nest box is without question telling you something. Let me think, what would it take to cause you to crap in your bedroom. Then think about whats happening to them.

I agree they do need a bigger cage so they can go poop in other places. If they were like cats and dogs I could just let them roam around free and choose their toilets, then come back home. Unfortunately snakes don't tend to come back to their keeper. Do you have any snakes in captivity, or just wild snakes that you feed white mice to (the rattlesnakes you mentioned)?
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Bob
Pyromaniac AKA Greatballzofire
Keeping cats allows man to cohabitate with tigers. Keeping reptiles allows man to cohabitate with dinosaurs.

OK FR Lets see your set up and see what you keep your snakes in?
Do you provide a natural enviroment? Do you give choices? do you feed natural prey? Do you follow these snakes around in the wild on your hands and knees going through their poop to see what they are eating?

You let your pits free range of your snake room??? That was natural behavior?? to poop 3 meters away??? They bask in a window like a puppy sitting waiting for their owner to come home???Yep, natural behavior.

We all know that every animals natural behavior is different when not locked up in 4 walls. Heck if Humans could go and do what ever when ever things would be different.

Like X individual left point A and moved to point B. The snake must travel more then its own lenght.
So your telling me a snake has to move more than it's own length to call it Point A and Point B. That's just absurb! For you to go from point A to point B you have to travel further than the length of your body. Your telling me if you sit on one end of the couch and it's uncomfortable and you move one seat over, you didn't move from point A to point B??

Think about this.Let me ask you this FR. Before we had toilets where did people poop? Out houses,right? and then before out houses and lime, where did the poop?? how about before that, and that, and that???? Can you tell me??? Was it always the same favorite place? or were they marking territory like animals do??? Wasn't all that long ago, was it???

Think about this. When the human race was made and they reproduced, and a baby was breached what happened? What causes it? Was it at the hands of the owner?? Take that scenerio and apply it to snakes? You can state that things are always at the hands of the owner??? It never happens to a wild snake??? A wild snake never has something go wrong???

Inquiring minds wants to know? I have read many of your posts and you do make very valid points, and I have learned from them. But I think your last post was a shot at Bob and what he knows and sees. And in all actuality he was just making a statement on what he sees and the way his snakes act in a BOX! Your box is no better than his! It's still a box! whether its 600 square feet or 30 square feet. The natural behavior is gone but at least Bob is noticing his animals and their behaviors and enjoying the ability to watch his animals. Unlike some that throw them in a box, feed handfuls of food, make a snake puke up eggs, all for what?

Bob has done nothing wrong in his posts, just not up to your expectations of a snake keeper? I want to see your set up! C'mon I am calling you out, prove to everyone here that what you post is what you follow. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

I admit mine live in a box, mine get fed when I feed them, mine breed when I say they do, mine get fresh water when I change it, mine live in a clean cage when I clean it,Mine lives in a climate that I make, and each one of my snakes exhibit different behaviors, and things go wrong.I admit maybe at the hands of my husbandry or choices I make for them.

I love the fact that I can sit and watch them from the comfort of my home natural or un-natural behaviors. Study their behaviors while in a box, breeding in a box, egg laying in a box, mating in a box, etc. Seeing snakes breeding,egg laying,hatching in the wild is hard to come by, unless I am out there everyday all day and night. I also like watching them in the wild displaying their natural behaviors. When I get the chance to see them.
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Jimmy Tintle

FR:Like X individual left point A and moved to point B. The snake must travel more then its own lenght.

KcTrader:So your telling me a snake has to move more than it's own length to call it Point A and Point B. That's just absurb! For you to go from point A to point B you have to travel further than the length of your body. Your telling me if you sit on one end of the couch and it's uncomfortable and you move one seat over, you didn't move from point A to point B??
Oh, God, I am laughing so hard my sides hurt!!!! I do believe I will have to move all the way off point A (my chair) to point B...on the floor to roll around!

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Bob
Pyromaniac AKA Greatballzofire
Keeping cats allows man to cohabitate with tigers. Keeping reptiles allows man to cohabitate with dinosaurs.

Hi Jimmy, really great rationalization. But as I conveyed to Bob, its not about me. Its about the animals.
How about you looking at them.

do you really think their behavior is based on living in a tiny box?????

What is so silly is, not what I say, but that you think it has anything to do with me. Its not about me.

Sir, If I stuff a snake in a box. I know I stuffed one in a box, and I did that, not the snake. The dang snake didn't crawl in the box from outside. Test that sir, open your box and see what happens.

if you want to keep them in tiny boxes, good for you, I could careless, its your snakes. But to think that is normal for them is silly, real silly.

Then to judge them from being stuck in a tiny box, well thats more then silly.

Good luck

I understand the best thing for the snakes we keep is to preserve the enviroment that they live in. Period.

Now can I have the blue pill to see how far the rabbit hole goes.

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Jimmy Tintle

Oh, young student of the serpents...when you can snatch the serpent egg from the self-proclaimed Master's hand, only then will you be ready to leave the temple..

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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

LMAO!!!!! Love that part!!!
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Jimmy Tintle

Hey Doug, hope all is well with you. It didnt take but a few minutes to read through a few posts to clearly see why I left this forum. Glad to see you and a few others at least interjecting with your own viewpoints and show that there are are more than the one viewpoint of he who must not be named. By the way , didn't God put us all in a box?

Although I am not sure who it is that is not to be named, if you are referring to FR, I am grateful to him for helping me to see outside the box. The trouble with human communication is it is generally fraught with personality and ego issues. I frankly am amazed the human race has not nuked itself out of existence yet.

Some of us require a lot of space just to stay sane, myself included.
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Bob
Pyromaniac AKA Greatballzofire
Keeping cats allows man to cohabitate with tigers. Keeping reptiles allows man to cohabitate with dinosaurs.

Lol.

You're not just arguing with just one of us fellow knuckleheads.
You're going up against the big one. We have seen him chew up and spit out others.....

Remember the scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail?

It's just a rabbit?

Said in a whisper. ( back out of the cave, avoid eye contact....sssshhhh...)

Lol.

http://youtu.be/XcxKIJTb3Hg

This has been very interesting.
How I envy the position tht FR has himself in. Wouldn't it be great if we could fasten a mini camera and a gps to snakes in the wild? Just dreaming about what we could learn.
Speaking of learning, I am new to this computer age stuff, how do I get to see what is in these blank squares with the little symble up in the top left corner?

theOLDherper
Pete

except with a snake
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Jimmy Tintle

Wow.

Yes it is, stealing a camera and then trying to steal a spear gun. Good thing he didn't have a big gold necklace on otherwise the octo thief would be trying to steal that too..
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Jimmy Tintle

I am trying, no matter where I go I run. Run Jimmy Run!!!
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Jimmy Tintle