CapeFearConstrict
Wilmington, NC
Male, 32
I've been working with ball pythons for over ten years now. Two years ago I decided to breed them as a business. I run a small operation. Currently I have approximately 100 snakes in my breeding program and hope to produce over 200 babies in the 2013 breeding season. I've always been fascinated by reptiles, snakes in particular, and being able to work with them every day is very satisfying.
You can't really train snakes in the same manner as you can a dog. Reptile brains are very primitive. There's not much there beyond the essentials for survival. Snakes do get vibes from humans though. If you are handling a snake and you're nervous and scared, the snake will realize that and also be on edge. If you are calm and confident, the snake will know it and be more at ease. It's still under debate on whether or not snakes learn and can identify their owners vs others. Some snake owners will swear their snake treats them differently than others. Personally, I'm of the opinion that the snake really is only reacting to how you are feeling. Also, snakes tend to change their personalities as they age. Babies are typically more easily irritated and more likely to bite. They have to be though, as in the wild, baby snakes are easy prey. Once they reach adulthood, they tend to mellow out. As far as danger, if it's a smaller snake, the only dangerous area is going to be their teeth. When someone is handling one of my snakes, I caution them to keep the snake's head out of striking distance of their face. Ball pythons have heat sensing organs that help them find their prey. Your face is warm and your breath is hot, so that's a big ball of heat that the snake is seeing and in a moment of confusion, they might strike. As I mentioned before though, a bite from a ball python isn't exactly dangerous. It's more of an annoyance than anything. You also want to avoid sudden movements. Predators in the wild move and attack quickly, so any sudden movements might be seen as an attack and could result in a defensive strike. Now, with venomous snakes, you don't want to be anywhere near them unless you've had proper training. Bad things happen when a venomous snake bites you. Larger constrictor snakes, such as burmese pythons or reticulated pythons, can pose more of a danger, since they are strong enough to constrict you to the point where you can't do anything about it. It's always recommended that you don't handle large constrictors alone. Always have someone on hand to help, in case the snake starts constricting. The snake won't constrict you with the idea of eating you, but if the snake is draped around your neck and starts feeling uneasy, it might tighten its grip on your neck in order to keep from falling off, and that could lead to a bad situation. Once you get enough experience working with the snakes, you learn how they work. You understand their body language and know when they are relaxed and when they really just want to be left alone. I can easily tell if one of my snakes is likely to bite, and through experience I also know the best ways to handle a snake that is likely to bite so that they don't bite.
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As far as I know, there are no pythons that are cannibals. There are some other species of snakes, such as the king snake or the king cobra, that do eat other snakes.
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Ball pythons got their name due to the fact that when they feel frightened or stressed, they ball themselves up. I've read that the reason ball pythons do this is because in their natural environment, the king cobra is their natural predator, and balling up makes them more difficult to swallow. I don't recall where I read that, so I can't verify if it's factual but it makes sense to me. As for other reasons why snakes might coil up, I think there might be a few different reasons. If they find a warm spot, like a rock that has been heated by the sun, coiling up over it makes sure their entire body gets the heat. It might also help to make them less visible to predators and to feel more secure. It could also put them in a better body posture to strike if they need to.
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There's no set rule that can be used to determine if a mutation (morph) will be valuable. It's all determined by how desirable the mutation is and how much supply there is of that mutation. As for making an individual snake valuable, you have some control over that. You would need to pair up a male and/or female that contain the gene or genes that you want in the baby, and then hope you hit the odds. The way the mutations work is that a baby is born that is different. The difference might be subtle or it might be blatantly obvious. Most of the morphs we have today came from wild caught animals from Africa. When these snakes are found, we don't know if the mutation is caused by a genetically passable trait, or if it's just some anomaly in the snake. A breeder will need to buy the snake and prove it out, which in some cases, can be very expensive. As an example, the viper ball mutation was bought for $70,000 and turned out not to be genetic. The GHI ball mutation was bought for $125 and now animals with that single gene are going for $10,000. It's a gamble that some of the big breeders take because the payoff can be enormous. A single new desirable gene can make a breeder hundreds of thousands of dollars in just a few years. Can you create a valuable snake by breeding two normal or common snakes together? In extremely, extremely rare instances, yes, but normally no, that doesn't happen. The only way it could happens is if a random mutation occurs in one of the babies that turns out to be both genetic and desirable. There have been very few instances of this happening, but it does happen.
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No, that's not possible. Like I mentioned in an earlier answer, snakes can't be trained in the same way dogs and cats can. They just don't have the intelligence required. It would also be difficult to teach them vocal commands because snakes don't have ears.
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I feed most of my snakes rats of various sizes, depending on the size of the snake. The more picky eaters might get mice or African Soft Furs (ASFs), a more rare type of rat.
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Honestly, that's a tough question. An easier question would be "what's the worst thing about breeding snakes?" That would be cleaning up snake poop day after day. :) The best thing... It would have to be seeing baby snakes hatch out of their eggs. It takes anywhere from 4-8 months from the time you start pairing the male and female together until she lays eggs and those eggs are ready to hatch. Those babies are the culmination of months of anticipation, hoping, hard work and patience. It's a combination of seeing the miracle of new life, the feeling of accomplishment in knowing that you had a big hand in making it happen, and the hope you have for the future with the babies you just hatched. That would be the best thing about breeding snakes as far as I'm concerned.
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