Very cool thread topic. Animal behavior, to me, has always been the most interesting aspect of animal study.
My hatchling eastern, Lenore, sniffs everything very vigorously when she goes into her feeding response. She just recently started displaying the indigo appetite and feeding response, but yesterday I made my first attempt at feeding her pinkies dusted with vitamins and I think it threw her off. She came out of her hide, very alert, ready to eat, but it seemed like the mice didn’t smell quite right to her. She went from mouse to mouse (I left four in the cage) nudging them and sniffing them and then searching the rest of the cage. She seemed frustrated, like she knew there was food but she wasn’t sure what was food. She even nudged and sniffed her branch. Eventually, slowly, she gave in and ate the vitamin dusted pinkies.
One of them, she spat back up, halfway, to get a better hold, and I noticed it was soaked with spit. So I concur with the heavy salivating thing.
A lot of people (myself included) have asked for a more info on the Indigo’s apparent intelligence. Usually the answer is that it’s hard to describe or that indigos seem more “aware” of their surroundings. I’ve noticed something with Lenore that is a little bit of a more specific answer.
It seems to me that indigos are a very “head driven” snake. What I mean is that they constantly cock their heads in different directions to take in their surroundings (which usually is more of a trait for a warm blooded creature, or some lizards). Lenore holds her head up in the air a lot more than past snakes I’ve owned. The other snakes I’ve owned seem more generally aware of their surroundings. If something scares them, they hide, if they are interested (in food) they move forward. But they never really looked around.
Many snakes move with a high economy of motion (reptiles just don’t have the same energy levels than warm blooded animals do). They usually sit in their hides, or on a branch and don’t waste energy with unnecessary movement. Lenore on the other hand, twists her head back and forth, sniffs things, and (in general) seems more active (probably because they have a higher metabolism than many other snakes).
And though Lenore sits in her hide most of the time (she still thinks everything is going to eat her), like many other snakes, she almost always keeps her head peaked out and watches what goes on around her. Even now, she has her head out the top hole of her favorite hide.
I recall, one time, I was observing her while she was moving about her cage, when she noticed me moving and started to back up. I didn’t want to scare her and wanted her to be able to explore her cage, so I ducked down lower than the cage, so I was out of her site line. Rather than go into her hide or deciding that there was no more threat and going about her business (the two options I think most snakes would take) she, instead, peeked her head up over her water bowl to see where I was at. I had disappeared and she wanted to know where I was.
Whether this curiosity and “head driven” nature of the Indigo are signs of a genuinely higher intelligence than the average snake, or just give the impression there of, I could not say.
-Josh
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One female Eastern Indigo. That's right, just one snake. But she's my dream-snake, so back off man.
