Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi guys---Okay, I'm just a lurker and I don't even OWN an indigo, but I enjoy reading this forum and find lots of the issues you cover very interesting...anyhow, I keep reading that indigos are "the most intelligent" snake, and was wondering if anyone here has stories or anecdotes that illustrate that? What exactly do these snakes do that causes people to think they're unusually intelligent?

Thanks for any feedback...

SR

...All in one afternoon! LOL.

Seriously, indigos (all Drymarchon) are large, active, sight hunters. They need a lot of food OFTEN.

Animals don't develop intellegence unless they need it.
More secrective snakes that do not feed as often probably don't have the need for the level of intellgence that indigo snakes seem to have.

Because of their demanding needs, They are natually curious and inquisitive...and I'm sure there are lots of stories the people here can share.

Here's one: There was a wild snake that was witnessed in Florida by a naturalist studying these snakes that hung out in an area where there was a bunch of trash like discarded furnature.

This snake found a bookshelf unit that was upright and "learned" to use use it to an advantage. The bookshelf was out in the open, and, this snake would regularly climb to the top of the shelving unit when hungry and use it as a vantage point.

When it spotted prey from the vantage point, it would rush down off of the shelves and chase it down.

Just one of many...

They are good at snaking wire, but they cut a lot of corners so be careful.

And NEVER play poker with an indigo. You just can't read their faces.

Trouble is they're limited to AWG 14 and 16, so kitchens are out of the question.
-----
Tom
TCJ Herps
"The more people I meet, the more I like my snakes"

They start making that "shhh-shhh-shhh" excited noise when they have a really good hand. Listen for that. And sometimes they involuntarily musk when delt a bad hand.

I'm going to outsmart that critter and win back my money yet.

The olfactory confusion will give you an opportunity to win. Try it! It works!

God Bless,

Fred

I don't know if this is intelligent or not, but Indigos can be interactive. A friend had one, and he would open the cage top, and the Indigo would glide out (sometimes rapidly...) and follow the keeper around the room and take mice from his hand, perhaps 12' from the cage. We even put it in the backyard and it would chase a mouse down on the lawn while we photographed it. It did not seem disoriented as some snakes are when moved about. Sometimes this feeding behavior would get a little out of hand, and the enthusiastic (not necessarily intelligent...) snake would grab the keeper, one time chewing him on the cheek! I recoiled with a mixture of mirth and horror...great B grade Science fiction footage. If you have ever dealt with "fussy" feeders, this sort of response is amusing, refreshing.

"Eastern Indigos are the most intelligent of all snakes." That is my quote I believe.

One thing I expect in an intelligent animal is eye-contact. My Eastern Indigos make almost continuous eye-contact with me. This is more apparrent with the red-throats since their eyes are reddish, and you can see where they are looking.

I like it when an Eastern sees me walk into the room and comes to the front of the cage, moving back and forth trying to get my attention. I am sure they are trying to entice me to feed them, or to open the cage and handle them.

My most intelligent Easterns will fully consume their food at the top of the cage (where I open the top to stick the food item in) dangling it in the air as they swallow it. This prevents the food item from collecting pine shavings. Their natural instinct is to pull hard and thrash the food around. I particularly like it when an Indigo will fully consume the food, while at the top of the cage, staring at me the whole time. They seem to be in clear recognition, and thankful, of who their provider is.

When an Indigo escapes and I can't find it, I used to panic, and check all the windows, go outside, etc. I no longer get bothered. They always find me. I will be making dinner, or reading, and I will hear a noise, and along will come my missing Indigo, right by my feet, seeming to say "hey, I was looking for you, you got any food around here?"

My favorite story is of a young juvenile several years ago. Snake keepers all seem to go through the phase of feeding live animals to snakes because the hunt and chase is so intense. I was in that phase, and I had just tossed a live mouse into this Eastern's cage. The snake went crazy, and went after the mouse. The mouse would jump each time the snake struck, and the snake got a hold of the mouse by one of its hind legs. The mouse turned and got it's teeth buried into the top of the Indigo's head. This seemed to make the snake ever more determined, but it couldn't swallow the mouse, only it's leg. The mouse, knowing it's life was at stake, bit down even harder, not releasing it's clench on the snake's head. I could see the flesh of the Indigo being stretched and gnawed as the snake tried to swallow the mouse. I got alarmed and thought "how in the world am I going to kill or stun that mouse without hurting the snake?" Before I could do anything, the Indigo began to zip around the cage, with frenzied speed, in reverse. On the second or third time around, going backwards, the snake with obvious intention, backed itself up and over the water bowl, and as it's head with attached mouse passed over the bowl, it instantly plunged it's head to the bottom of the bowl. After 15 minutes under the water, motionless, I became worried that the snake was dead. I didn't know that they could hold their breath that long. Well, mice can't hold their breath that long, that is for sure. The young snake then calmly raised it's head to the surface of the water, and consumed the mouse there, staring at me as intently as I was staring at it.

I better conclude this post. All of my writing will get dumped if I take too long.

Robert Bruce

Thanks Robert---that's exactly what I was looking for...pretty amazing...

SR

One of my males, a 10 year old I hatched in 1994...he absolutely knows me by sight from other people. I have no doubt about it.
He just reacts differently.

He watches curiously whenever I enter the snake room, even if he's got a full belly.

And when he's very hungry...well...let say he almost "begs"
Comes to the glass, moves back and forth rapidly, and sometimes actually opens and closes his mouth. I think he knows without a shadow of a doubt that I personally, am the source of his food.

As for other snakes, I think cobras are right there with indigos. I've worked with them in a zoo environment, and they are every bit as active, alert, seemingly intelligent.
I would like to see DNA work done to see how closely related they are. I bet that they were a single group of snakes before the continents split, and the snake on the east side (for reasons unknown...) developed venom while the west siders did fine with a more primative method of subduing prey.

Other than venom...I can't think of a single way that cobras like the Naja group, differ from indigos / cribos.

I don't know about the rest of you, but there are times that I feel very guilty about keeping these animals in captivity. If any snake is capable of a similar emoition to the human "boredom"
it would be indigos.

Keeper / Owner identification appears to be quite prevalent among Drymarchon, as several of my Drys, and others I have worked with via university and zoological collections, have demonstrated the same identification abilities.
Dean is absolutely correct, regarding his analysis of the behavioral and phenotypic similarities, as the two genuses appear to have evolved divergently from one another.
While I find Drymarchon to be exceptionally intelligent, my experiences have led me to believe I do believe Ophiophagus Hannah and Python reticulatus to be of equal, if not greater, intelligence. Of course, the Drys are my favorite, but O. Hannah runs a very close second…

Best regards,

Jeff

Dean, I have no experience with cobras. From the stories I have heard though, it seems that many species of cobras are extremely high strung, and do not want to be handled, whether wild-caught or captive bred. I know that there are exceptions. Jeff has told me of a friend of his who always free handled a (was it an Asian king?) cobra and it was a kitty cat. And Brian Sharp has told me that he used to free handle "Monacled" cobras of his (am I spelling it right?)

These may be the exceptions though. I interpret the calm nature of the Eastern Indigo, and the seeming enjoyment these animals take in being handled, as a sign of their intelligence. Even though they did not evolve on Earth being handled by humans, they adapt to this new thing, and react to it intellectually rather than instinctually. Overcoming instincts, in a manner which takes learning and adaptability, these are signs of intelligence.

It is clear that even wild Eastern Indigos are easily approached in nature and readily picked up and handled. Check out that recent post by Justin Campbell ("jcampbell" on March 15 on this forum (and the following posts in that thread). Many people have had such experiences, this is characteristic of wild Easterns.

Cobras do have that same aware and alert look as Easterns do. There is no doubt that they are among the more cerebral of all snakes.

Robert Bruce.

*Note the stories below of me picking up indigo snakes were conducted legally as part of sceintific studies with permitted researchers*

Personally, I have always felt that it is irresponsible and moronic to free handle cobras. Yes...they are certainly more agressive than Dry's.

We had an Asain cobra we named "Skippy" at the KY reptile zoo, b/c she would skip her nose off the glass trying to get at you every time you walked pass the cage.

You are right, of the 10 or more eastern indigos I've picked up in the wild*, the only bite I have ever received was a from a 4' indigo that was sunning itself on a tree limb and in that "daze"...I think I stunned him when I picked him up, and I got a quick., defensive "nip" that didn't even draw blood. Even the very large snakes that I have picked up in the wild only hiss a bit and maybe musk, and you know they could put a world of hurting on me if they wanted to.

So...I don't know why that is...but I don't really have a reason to think it's a sign of intelligence. If they LEARNED through being in cptivity that people were ok...that would be different. But indigos just don't seem to have a bite-in-slef defense response at all, even in the wild. Seems like it may help them if they did...

I am not saying that Eastern Indigos are calm because they are intelligent.

What I am saying is twofold. Firstly, that in more intelligent animals, instinctive behavior is replaced with learned behavior. Secondly, that instinctive responses are not as hard-wired into more intelligent animals' brains at birth. More intelligent animals are born with instinctive behaviors that are more readily changed by learning.

Now, we know that Eastern Indigos must be fearful as soon as they hatch, since there are clearly many different animals that would predate on a smalll baby Indigo Snake. My own hatchlings are prepared to bite, and always try to bite me when I try to help them remove their first shed a couple weeks after they hatch. They may musk when I first pick them up from their cage. They will coil and even strike, when I attempt to pick them up in a careless way. But, by adults, we can all handle them in a pretty carefree way. They have an aversion toward biting, I would almost have to say. It is almost impossible to get bit by an Indigo except as an accidental feeding response. They also never musk anymore, after becoming a few months old.

It sure seems like the self defense instinctive behaviors are less hardwired in an Eastern Indigo, compared to most of the Cobras. I just kind of tend to parallel general intelligence with the lack of hardwiring. This is not a hard and fast parallel though. Cobras could be more intelligent than Indigos but still be more hardwired in terms of self defense. This may be because there are more predators of the Cobra in its native environment, compared to the predators of the Eastern Indigo in its native environment.

It also may be that some Cobras in general are less hardwired in their self defense instincts than we believe. Those people that do free handle them would certainly preach that the self defensive behavior of their particular animal is calm and predictable enough that they can depend on not being bitten when free handling them on a routine basis. The owner may be doing what some may think is a stupid thing, but I would claim that those particular Cobras are probably very intelligent.

I don't have any personal experience with Cobras in order to make a good judgement about their intelligence. For animals, Cobras or Indigos, that have self defensive behaviors that are more hardwired into their brains, then they rank lower in one of the parameters used to rate intelligence.

Robert Bruce

Many folks can't seem to handle kings and corns (and other snakes too) without getting bit or dumped on. My friend Tucker, claims that he gets bit and defecated on every time he handles them. I know that this must not be universally true, but it is at least common. Some species of snakes let you have it from both ends.

In all the years I have worked with Indigos (eight) I have never once been defecated on by an Indigo, and not once have I been bit defensively (except for hatchlings, if I try to help them get their first shed off). Come to mention it (except for hatchlings as well) I have never been musked on by an Eastern.

I don't know if the absence of these behaviors are signs of intelligence (but I suspect that they are).

Wanting to own a snake that does not do these things may be a sign of human intelligence though.

Robert Bruce.