Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've posted a preliminary update on the web page on how the mambas are doing after treatment. www.snakegetters.com/demo/mamba/update.html

The upshot is that the black mamba in the most critical condition died from what appeared to be hemolytic anemia secondary to general debilitation and an opportunistic overgrowth of a Hepatozoon parasite. The other black mamba is 100% recovered, feeding voluntarily and looking magnificent. The Jameson's needed sutures to close tissue over the exposed bone as it was not healing properly, and got switched to a different antibiotic for 20 days. Those sutures are now well healed over and she accepted a live mouse today.

Both of these animals are ready to go to new homes, assuming I can find sufficiently responsible new homes. I am not putting them up on the open market where some snake hacker might buy them. These snakes have been through quite enough abuse already and they certainly don't need any more.

we should talk some Tanith, send me an email.
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It's what you learn AFTER you know it all that counts!

Terry

Around 7' or so (haven't measured), probed very definitely male. Nice body condition; kept him in good shape with assist feeding while his mouth was healing. Now that he is healed up, he snacks down live mice like popcorn. Very enthusiastic eater.

He will probably switch over to frozen/thawed food fairly easily, but for his initial feedings I wanted to assess how he moved and envenomated. (The answer to both questions is "very quickly!" He is still a bit skittish and scared of people, but he has calmed down considerably and is not difficult to handle.

He is being slowly acclimated to routine handling and also to being "on display" with people close by his cage. The longer he lives with this routine, the easier he will be to work with. I would never call a mamba "tame" but they can be gradually habituated to the point that routine cage maintenance is a bit safer and they don't freak out when people walk by.

I've always found Blacks to calm down better than the other 3 species of Dendroaspis, but that may have just been mine.

Chad

While I would never, ever think of a venomous snake as "tame" with all that implies, I have found that it is not difficult to habituate both blacks and Eastern greens to routine handling to the point that they don't really react much to people. It goes just a little faster in my experience with the Eastern greens than with the blacks, but they both end up pretty calm with enough gentle handling and habituation.

Of course if you aren't skilled at dealing with their initial panic attempts to bite and flee, it's a pretty bad idea to try to habituate them. lol I really don't want to give people the idea that mambas are easy to "tame". They aren't. They tend to be absolute buggers to start with, and they will continue to be very spooky and defensive until they have been handled competently and gently a fair number of times.

Jamesons are a lot harder to get calmed down. I haven't worked all that much with Westerns. For some reason they don't tend to get imported in the same horrific shape as the other species, so they don't get dumped on my doorstep in droves like all the rest. I'm not sure why. Anyone else have a clue?

I never said they were tame, just calmed down more easily for me.

Take care,

Chad

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Fantastic work MsTT!

And thanks for the update.
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GratefulFred