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.
I feel ball pythons are a great starter snake. They are very docile, reluctant to bite and they don't get too big. Some snakes are very active when being handled, they will be going this way and that, and for a child this might pose problematic if the snake gets away from them. Ball pythons will explore a little bit while being handled, but they aren't usually quick moving and they are easy to control. Ball pythons aren't perfect though. They are notoriously picky eaters. I have some snakes that haven't eaten in over seven months. This is frustrating when you're trying to raise up a snake for breeding, but as a pet owner, it's not such a big deal. Corn snakes are another species that come highly recommended. I have no personal experience with them, so I can't comment much. Definitely research any species you decide to go with before bringing your pet home.
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I have seen that movie and it's 100% pure fiction. Hollywood rarely portrays snakes in an accurate (or even positive, for that matter) way. It's a shame that the only time you see a snake in a movie is when they want to scare you.
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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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If a mutation is genetic, there's always a chance that it will be passed onto offspring. DNA comes in pairs. Each part of the DNA contributes something to the oganism. When a baby is created, half the DNA comes from the mom, half from the dad. Some mutations are only on half of the DNA pair, others are on both. When it's on half, there's a 50% chance it passes onto each offspring, when it's on both, there's 100% chance it passes on (but the resulting offspring may only end up with half the mutation, unless both parents pass on the mutation).
This is a very simplified explanation, but hopefully it gets the idea across. Any genetic mutation is passable. When the mutation is caused by environmental causes (usually due to temperature issues during development in the case of ball pythons), those mutations are not passed onto offspring.
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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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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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If you provide them with the proper environment (enclosure, bedding, heating, humidity, food), then they pretty much do everything necessary for breeding on their own. You simply put the male and female together and let them do their thing. As for knowing when they've copulated (aka, "doing the deed"), the first time they copulate, they stay that way for 12-24 hours. Talk about stamina! Basically, the tips of their tails lock together and the male inverts his hemipenes and inserts them into the female. It's hard to miss the first lockup of the season between a pair if you check on them 3-4 times a day. Additional lockups between the two will be shorter, but still usually several hours in length. Females really only need a few lockups if they are building their follicles in order to successfully produce eggs. I try to get my pairs to lock at least once per month until ovulation.
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