Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm rather new to this disease and I'm afraid my snake has it. I googled and there's not much info out there on it. I have a few questions, much appreciated if someone can answer them.

They say "alligator skin". Is that full body or just a portion? My snake has rough, unsheded-like skin only on a small portion of his body. Think the size of a coin, somewhere after his neck portion. There are no signs of it anywhere else. It had a good (I think) shed about a week ago and the "unsheded" portion became even more visible after that.

It does seem sluggish, especially compared to how it was until a few months ago. It also seems much more reclusive and I've caught it drinking water quite often.

Occasionally I find it in strange positions, such as between the glass of the terrarium and a rock, as if it got stuck in there.

The snake eats regularly.

Any information you can provide? Advice? Where can I find a detailed description of this disease and maybe some pictures of the "alligator skin"? Thanks.

Edit: If not Zonata disease, could it be another skin disease? If so, which? Fungal dermatitis perhaps?

Put a pic up of the portion of skin you are talking about. The wedging between glass and rocks is normal. They will find any spot in their given cage to squeeze and feel secure. To me, it sounds like it might be some sort of bacterial infection. I have seen it in a couple diff. lampro species, where it is sections, or spots of rough, almost crusted up skin. Does the muscle tone seem fuc*ed up at all...?, as if it can not slither normal. Half the body twisting to either side...?. When I have seen it in animals, the rough skin was through out the whole snake, and the eyes looked like they were sctratched up with sand paper and wrinkled look. Also, with in 2 days of shedding it would go back into the blue again. Put up some pics if you can and I bet people with more experience than I can offer will help. Good luck,
Jeff

I did took a couple of pictures, but they came out unclear. Even I who knew where to look didn't see much in them. I'm going to take the snake to a veterinarian tomorrow and hopefully this will be sorted out.

Thank you for answering. You might be right about the bacterial infection. Its eyes are clear, I saw the eyecaps myself on the last shed and they look fine now and it does not have an unusual muscle tonus. There are no other signs on its body. We'll see.

Best wishes!

Pretty sure not an infection - it is called too dry of conditions. Doesn't matter if it has water to drink.

If you soak the snake in about 1/2 inch of water for aonly 5 minutes once a week, you will see no dry patches, and the skin tone will look fantastic. That easy.

Remember, these things spend 99% of the time in the ground where they do not dry out much.
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Mark

Hi
I thougth I'd put a few words in here. I lost my entire L. z. agalma collection of 9 specimen to this disease and I can say that your description does not fit very good.

The alligator-skin covers the whole animal and the snake starts to move in an uncontrolled way - backwards, body upside down while head straight and so on.

The signs are very strong and could not be mistaken for anything else. I tried just about everything I could think of and then some, but nothing could stop the disease.

Five of my agalmas died, I put the remaining four to sleep myself. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do during my 40 years keeping snakes.

N/P