Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I own two mid-03 CB Normals. They are as friendly and tame as can be. They have never once struck at me. I have also never seen them do their trademark 'Ball' position when they feel scared. Maybe my balls just have a lot of trust in me? I hanlde them several times a week.

However, I always seem to see people showing pictures and making comparissons with their specimens in the ball position.

How do they get their animals to cooperate in this way? And if the animals are not cooperating, are they making them scared on purpose, just for a good shot? And if so, isn't that fundamentally WRONG to do to such great animals, or any animal for that matter?

Sorry for the ramble, I hope you get where I am going with this. I'd love to hear anyone's responses. I am only a novice when it comes to experience with these amaizing creatures.
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-Iman

2.0 Balls (Spot and Speck)
0.1 Colombian BCI (Belle)
1.0 Colombian Rainbow (Rex)

Loving to Learn
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As a novice aswell, my take is that the snakes just aren't handled as often as a pet would be. So they stay a little bit more defensive. This is just a theory from limited personal experience with both captive bred and wild caught snakes. Hopefully someone in-the-know will reply.

The first ball I ever had has only balled up for me once. She is a sweetheart and has never shown a sign of being stressed out at all (as balls are known to do.) She is off feed right now, but cool at 1200 grams and not yet two years old. As my first ball, she gave me the illusion that CB balls just don't "ball."

I now own four ball pythons and only my 02 ghost male regularly "balls up." The two 03 babies I have did at first, and my pastel still does at certain times, but my ghost is the only one who gets really tight into a knot. He always does uncurl himself in time (5-10 minutes.} It's like he knows nothing is wrong, but prepares himself just in case.

I handle my ball pythons as much as possible, since I DO want to breed them, but want them as my pets for 40 years at the least before that. So if you do not handle your ball pythons, they could be less social than mine.

This is just my experience, but I say if your snake is eating, shedding and defecating you have nothing to be afraid of, no matter what their behavior is while handling. So treat it the way you want to. If it stops eating give it a break from handling. Otherwise, be thankful you have a sociable, unafraid ball python!

They may not necessarily make them ball up, etc. I mean, all my BPs hides are circular - so he balls up to get in them. If I come along and lift the hide off, he's still in a ball for a bit - probably because I'm waking him up and he's slowly figuring out what's going on. So I basically have a bit of time that I can snap a shot before he 'unballs' himself. Maybe (hopefully) that's the case with some of the pics we see.

I also wonder if it's not always a defensive position, but maybe a comfortable or instinctual position.
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the ball python really only does this when its scared OR annoyed. and yes, it is wrong to scare them for that purpose, but unfortunatly the laws that apply to mamals as pets don't apply to reptiles.