Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have had my yearling yellow rat snake for a few months now and he still is VERY tempermental. He will 'S' himself,shake his tail and strike at me anytime I place my hand in the enclosure. Now being that he is so small he doesn't hurt but when he gets a little larger I know Yellow Rats can give you a wicked bite. When I finally do pick him up he is real wirey most of the time and usually takes a crap on me. Other times he will sit in my hand and coil himself around my fingers. MOST of the time once I actually have him in my hand he doesn't bite,other times he is good for maybe 2 mins tops before he whips his head around and latches on to my finger. Me and my GF handle him maybe 3-4 times a week for a couple of minutes a day. Any advice or is this little guy just going to be an aggresive snake? I'll post a picture when I can.

Sounds like your doing what you need to if you want to tame him. If you handle him a few times a week he "should" grow out of that behaviour.

Keep up with what you're doing, but I'd suggest handling him a little longer each time if you can, to let him get more accustomed to you. You might just have an ornery individual that will take more time and patience to tame. Then again, he may _never_ settle down.

One thing I've noticed in my many years of experience with wc snakes is that rat snakes, in terms of individual temperament, seem to exhibit far more variability than most other species. Some tame down very quickly, while other specimens of the same species/subspecies just never settle down. Doesn't seem to relate to age, gender, or any other factor I can identify. My experience here (Oklahoma) is with Elaphe obsoleta - Black/Texas Rat intergrades locally. Other folks with more experience with E. o. quadrivittata (Yellow Rat) may disagree here, but I think it likely that if one subspecies demonstrates such variability in temperament, others will also.

I have 6 Vietnamese Blue Beauties and until this week 2 of them have been complete terrors. In fact I had every intention of selling or trading them off at one point because I really didn't think I wanted their aggressive genes in my breeder colony. However as fate would have it, they also happen to be the 2 most stunning snakes in the group so I decided to bite the bullet and resign myself to being bitten. That all changed this week. After 6 months of handling, they calmed down and I can let them slide through my fingers without fear (much). I still won't let them near my face - ever.

Good luck.

I agree with the other posts: Sounds like you are doing what you need to do, AND there is alot of variation in ratsnake behavior...I do have one additional suggestion: Have you tried the latex glove? I used one with my feisty little texas rat. It seems to do 2 things: They say the snake does not like the taste of it...so it may learn that biting/striking is an unpleasant thing. Also, it may give you a little more confidence when you go to pick him up...and sometimes that helps, too. I used one glove, picked up the snake with my gloved hand, transferred it to my unglove hand, then took the glove off. Your snake sounds a little jumpier than mine was, so you may go with both gloves at first. Good luck. Duffy