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My friend hatched out this hypo from a pair of Cal kings he found in Temecula CA this spring. Unfortunately he found it dead this morning biting its self. It was 2 weeks old and took longer than normal to shed, but so did its siblings. He found it with a lot of its shed skin torn and hanging off. Any ideas of what might have happened?

Temecula Hypo by RossAZ480, on Flickr
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>>My friend hatched out this hypo from a pair of Cal kings he found in Temecula CA this spring. Unfortunately he found it dead this morning biting its self. It was 2 weeks old and took longer than normal to shed, but so did its siblings. He found it with a lot of its shed skin torn and hanging off. Any ideas of what might have happened?
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>>Temecula Hypo by RossAZ480, on Flickr
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I've found a few kings dead and biting themselves.
In my opinion they bite themselves where they feel pain.....
Maybe a heart attack or infection of some sort?????????

I found two DOR atrox before that where biting themselves where the car ran them over.......
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John Lassiter
Poor planning and procrastination on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part...

Good suggestions. I found this ruber doing the same thing.

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>>Good suggestions. I found this ruber doing the same thing.

Any chance that and the other examples could be result of an injured snake thrashing around, and teeth/fangs just happening to "hook" on a part of the body? the ones that thrashed around and did't happen to hook themselves would look like usual DOR.

Yes, I'd say there is a very good chance of that with Rattlesnakes. I found a juvenile DOR rattler one time and touched it with my flashlight. That thing started biting rapidly in all directions for a few seconds. I had heard they could do that, that's why I touched it with my flashlight. Its pretty crazy how our most dangerous snakes will do that.
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....what these careless idiots did, only he used his hand instead of a flashlight..LOL!

I've taken more fish hooks out of sharks mouths in the past than I could count, only I make damn sure I hold the freakin head down in case it does that..LOL!. Notice the one dork has his hand placed gently on the shark'shead without any pressure not doing a darn thing..HAHAA!!
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

serpentinespecialties.webs.com

Damn, those guys should have tried it another way after it bit the first time. lol
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"Damn, those guys should have tried it another way after it bit the first time. lol"

Yeah, those two are a pair of real "Mendelian Einsteins" after the first time there..HAHA!!

.......the old phrase "common sense,.....it's isn't so common" definitely applies there..
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

serpentinespecialties.webs.com

No way to know for sure from the info you gave and no pics.

One guess is if the shed skin was torn another sibling tried to eat it.

Or maybe this snake was just not meant to survive from internal deformity like a neorlogical or even melanin effecting the snake due to its trait...

I have seen new traits surface before that die after a few weeks because of a lack of something related to the recessive trait.

This was exactly the situation with the "Blue rosy" i produced.

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That makes a lot of sense. I'm wondering if maybe the parents are not het for hypo and it just popped out hypo and was also lacking other thing(s) internally. So that's where Blue rosy comes from. It looks axanthic. It also looks like the end of its tail is a head with its mouth open. lol Neat looking snake though.
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>>It looks axanthic.

Nope...it looks anery.....J/K....lol
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John Lassiter
Poor planning and procrastination on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part...

The two terms are interchangeable, so it doesn't matter. lol
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Axanery....so there is a new word!

Kerby...
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Life is like a bunch of fish in an aquarium....we all get along (bonding) until I want to eat you....and I do.

There, that solves the problem. lol
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HA! HA! HA!

You guys are a regular comedy club here.
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

serpentinespecialties.webs.com

>>.
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>>"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"
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>>serpentinespecialties.webs.com
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It was caged alone. He wrote me back and said it wasn't exposed to any kind of heat or chemical. And near by snakes were fine.
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Hey Ross,
Sounds like it died of dehydration.
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www.kingpinreptiles.com

Basing that on the fact it took extra long to shed? Could be a possibility, but those shavings are soaking wet. It looks like it had water. But anything is possible.
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I actually took the wet shavings into consideration, from there I came up with 2 causes of death. Either dehydration or poisoning... Maybe the substrate was sprayed with provent a mite or something similar? Then once wet the snake tried to drink off of it, thus being poisoned.

But from personal experience I'd say the snake dying while biting itself plus a shed stuck on it is from not having water. I've seen such more times than I'm proud of.

Nice looking stripers though, hopefully your buddy pops out another hypo next year!
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www.kingpinreptiles.com

You could be right. He could have neglected it and killed it. He's an inexperienced keeper, so anything is possible. He plans on breeding them next year. I'm just hoping he can successfully cycle them.
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