Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Assuming you were overly qualified to handle a extremly dangerous Elapid and liked them for there all around spunk and vigor. Which would you pick as your favorite for enjoyable evil disposition? Speaking of the ones that are on speed, hood for most any occasion, and with fangs flying are determend to make rid of you. Capes, Forests, Tree, Mamba( I bet this is a top choice for overall nutty behavior but I am also curious which some of you find enjoyable), some spitter, Taipans, Tigers, ect....??

Note: Please, I did not mean to puy Mambas down. They may still be top choice. Let's hear from you; Whats your pick??

well it depends on the snake itself and not the species in my oppinion. For example:
I keep 1.1 Naja melanoleuca.. I bought the male allmost 2 years ago and am ( according to other herpers) extreemly lucky with his behavior.. He has until now never hooded at me. Never has he even tried to attack me or show any kind of aggresive behavior. He is allways watching me when I am in the room and when I want to do his cage he pulls back his head inside the hidebox and I could leave it open ( but I don´t do that cause I am not ignorant and thinking I know my animal and get bitten anyway)when working in the cage..
Now last year I bought this baby female and man is she a [bleep]!!!! She is allways looking for a way to kill me.. It is even hard to feed her cause of her extreemly aggresive behavior and she emediatlly hoods when she spots me and will come towards me standing far up and very fast so that she is allmost coming in striking range .. She is allway like this!!!24/7 !!

The other species that I got are prety much calm with an outburst every now and then.. The Naja naja and Naja siamensis that I got are the 2 species that together with te melanoleuca are often pissed ..

I keep a Green Mamba and a Papuan Taipan and neither are what you would expect from the 2 species. The mamba can be "tangly" in her branches at times and the Taipan can be aggressive at night(which I avoid)but both are handleable. Suprisingly the 2 I fear most in my collection are my female normal Monocle Cobra (due to speed and flightiness) and my male Sumatran Spitter due to shear aggression, not to mention all the while making direct eye contact with you and spraying your arms with venom. Like the guy posted before I had a male Forest Cobra who was about as tame as a cat, which have horrible reputations. I think unfortunately you cannot predict a species' behavior based on the attitude of one specimen, it just all depends on the luck(or unluck in some cases) of the draw. That being said I think most elapid keepers keep the snakes they keep simply out of love and admiration, not the machismo factor. Having a "bad apple" somehwere in the bunch though usually comes with the territory when keeping animals of such a dangerous nature.