Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I just bought a female adult het axanthic, and found that she is very aggressive. She is two years old and my breeder told me that he probed her(I probed her myself today) when she hatched and she has been sitting in a 20 gal holding tank until today, is this the cause? she has a healty weight, no parasites inside or out. Could she be aggressive because of the lack of handling? and if so is there anyway to reverse it? Keep in mind that beside her hatching date and today she has never been handled, except for inspections and cage cleaning and she is a little over two years old

Thank you

Tony Butler

It could also be that she has a genetic tendency to be aggressive.

I once purchased an aggressive het albino male that was about a year old and hadn't been handled much by the breeder. He did calm down some as he aged and I handled him in the course of cage cleaning etc. However, half of his daughters with a normal (i.e. non-aggressive) ball where a little nippier than normal and more likely to hiss (especially for the first year or two) and so where half of his grandchildren with one of the aggressive daughters.

I've got eggs incubating now from a super aggressive pet store girl I picked out based on her belly pattern (similar to the sporadic het pied marker). It will be interesting to see if her attitude gets passed on to her offspring. As mean as she is perhaps she’s homozygous.

I'm sure past experiences (or lack of them) do play a part in a ball python's temperament but I think there is probably also a genetic component.

Ball pythons have a reputation for being shy and poor feeders. I suspect that some breeders have purposely selected aggressive normal females to breed into morph lines in the hopes of producing better feeders. While this has a tendency to make balls more like other snakes I think it is unfortunate because one of the neat things about the stereotypic ball, at least historically, has been it's nice temperament. Of course I can't say too much. If I get a really nice looking het pied, or even pied if I'm really lucky, and it has it’s mom’s bad attitude it's going to be hard not to want to breed it anyway.

I don't think aggression is tied very closely to feeding response. I have several aggressive snakes that are a PITA to feed even live food, and some some very docile ones that feed well enough to take a room-temperate FT as soon as hit hits the tub floor. I just don't see any consistency with aggression & feeding. I don't have hundreds of snakes though. Maybe with larger numbers I would, who knows.
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Astronomy Picture of the Day

A snake can hiss and strike defensivly because it is scared. To me that is not aggressive. They are also the worst ones to get to feed. If you spook them in any way they will lash out continually, but never eat. One of my 3 balls is this way.

I have others that are "cage aggressive". These are the best eaters. The second the cage door opens they go into feeding mode. Not very fun to clean their cage, but you never worry about them turning a meal down.

I think it is obvious that temperment is genetically linked. Its been proven again and again with domestic animals. Even with snakes you can see a difference if you look closely. You import a bunch of wc snakes and the ones that adjust live to breed. The ones that are too high strung die. Retics had a terrible reputation for years...now they are mellowing out. Compare a wc baby burmese...or even hatch one out of the egg yourself to one that has been cb for 4 generations or more. They may not be "tame" animals...but they don't spook as easily, and are not as defensive.

I raise my own feeder mice and rats and I've taken pinky mice out of wild nest I've found in my buildings and mixed them in with the baby mice I had. Both wild and tame were raised up by the same mother and had the exact same treatment from me. You could never confuse the two. The wild babies never ever tamed down like the others. Ever. The second generation was still more jumpy than the pure cb. Much better resistance to disease and cancer, but were much harder to handle.

Sorry for being so long winded.
Travis
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0.2 Normal Columbian
1.1 100% DH for Snow Columbians
0.2 66% DH for Snow Columbians
2.7 Kenyans (1.1 Anerys, 1.6 Possible hets)
0.3 Ball Pythons
1.0 Borneo Blood
0.0.2 Blue Tounged Skinks
0.3 Dogs (1 Full Pitbull, 1 Pit/Husky, & 1 Bernese Mt. Dog cross
0.3 Cats (1 fat, 1 old, and 1 insane)
1.0 Ferret
0.1 Very understanding wife

ok my ball gets aggressive when its hungry so mayeb thats an issue also he is very docile but it sounds like lack of handling and all that because they are very docile and friendly