Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have this query about my retic, She is a new born retic about 3' long i think a wild caught and on her first day with me she striked at my face. The situation goes like this, I handled her at 7 pm with all the lights on and she seem to didn't mind but when i handed her to my brother she striked, aiming for my face. luckily her jaws are a few inches short of succeeding...anyways, Why? she didn't bite my hands but why try her jaws with my face? I think my hand acted like a terrain but my face like a threat but i still need some expert advice. I know they are sensitive to movements but why didn't she strike at my moving hand trying to handle her while she tried it to my face?? What should i do to prevent these incident to ever happen again?

i wonderd over here from the burmese Forum but i also had the same prob with my CB Burm also 3feet when i handled him he was ok but when i went to put him back in the tank he got me in the nose. i believe the reason for the face strike is because our faces show more heat from our breath and what not i could be wrong (I am no expert) but if anyone else has a better reason let me know
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2 Burmese python
1 savu python
1 blood python
2 Uromastyx mali, Nigerian
2 savannah monitors
some other gems i will leave out..

9 out of 10 times it will be because you were exhaling when the animal was facing you. Your breath is humid and your body is warm. High humidity air carries heat more densly than low humidity. I.e. big cloud of heated vapor in front of your face = painfull lacerations and stitches with larger animals. In short, the animal saw something warm and tried to eat it.

This is how it should be for keepers that are new to retics. Acuire them when they are young, you ask questions and learn as they grow and become more dangerous. Smaller retics are more forgiving when you make mistakes than are larger ones. Take your bites when their small.

Even once you think you know what youre doing and have enough experiance to predict what the animal in question is going to do, you still cant give them to much slack. Ive got a few undeniably large females that Ive raised from the egg. I know these animals well and find them for the most part predictable. I still dont them anywhere my face. Thus, I still have both of my eyes.

Experiance dose not have to be measured in scars. However, if you stay in the retic game long enough it probably will be.

Darrell Armstrong
reticulus1@yahoo.com