I recently bought a baby female black blood who has been a wonderful eater and very sweet since I have had her, about a month and a half or so.
The other day I went to her with a small f/t rat, which is what she has always eaten, and she attacked the rat ferociously. She bit it then I let her have it, and she travelled to the other side of the cage and left the rat there. I thought "Ahh, mistake", so I tried again. 3 other times after that she lunged out of her cage and attacked the rat fiercely biting down and GRINDING her teeth into the thing.
Before, she has never refused a rat for me and she would fiercely go after the rat but never try to bite me. Has anyone seen this behavior before? She never ate the rat. Just tore into it like it was attacking her. She never hissed or anything, just seemed to be in a bad mood that day.... Strange.
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Strange Curtus behavior...
Replies (3)
Perhaps he's starting a shed cycle, and saw the rat as a threat. Snakes will show strange behavior toward prey when they're not hungry. Just watch for blue-ness and try again next week, I guess.
It's rare when constricting snakes don't feed if they both bite their prey AND constrict it. Sometimes just biting it isn't enough to elicit a feeding response, especially when the prey is f/t (frozen/thawed.)
When feeding dead prey (which accounts for nearly 100% of the meals we feed), after the python/boa grabs the offered food, if it doesn't immediately coil around it in an instinctive constricting coil, we reach in with tongs and give the rodent in its mouth a few tugs--that usually results in a constricting coil (in some snakes only a weak imitation of a constricting coil, but still it tweaks their feeding behavior.) Once they coil prey, it's rare that they not go ahead and feed it.
My little black yearling has done that, but I will put it back in his face and eventually he does eat it.I got worried the first time wondering whats his problem attacking it and leaving it there.My red blood does the same thing everytime, attacks it and leaves it there, I try again the same thing.He doesn't like me to watch him though.
