Fun Snake Facts

[frankykeno]

Another forum that Raber, GA and I frequent has a lot of younger snake owners so to help them understand just how very cool and fascinating their snakes are and encourage them to understand more about how a snake is designed I pulled this together a few months back. Thought it might be fun to share it here and encourage other members to add more cool snake facts to this list.

Just for fun some facts about how nature designed your pet snake:

- they can hear but have no external ear openings....they "hear" through their body and their lower jawbone

- they can recycle their own urine...they produce two forms of urine - the typical liquid pee and the solid urates....they have no bladder so their liquid waste goes through the kidney and straight on to the cloaca....they have this amazing ability to reclaim part of their own waste liquid and recycle it as in nature they have to live through some very dry seasons and may not have regular access to a clean water source, so they pull a lot of liquid from their live whole prey item.....after this process is complete the leftover is the solid urate....in captivity (or in nature when water is plentiful) they pass liquid urine as well as urates since they are very well hydrated so don’t need to be recycling every drop of liquid they take in.

- they can tell which way a rodent is travelling by how much scent is picked up by the left or right fork of their tongue (that tongue fits into a spot on the mouth called the Jacobson’s Organ and feeds the brain information)

- they most likely see in infra-red but also to some degree in the same way we do

- their stomach acid is so strong it can fully digest bones, hair and teeth (remember even a fire can’t always fully melt bones and teeth!)

- they can open their jaws two ways....horizontally and vertically....horizontally they can open to 150% or so

- the heat pits (labial pits) are so delicate they are said to be able to pick up temperature varients as minute as 0.002 degrees Celcius

- their scales are organized in ways so that certain types of scales do certain jobs...the big belly scales are tougher and are called "scutes" for instance and protect your snake and help it move

- male snakes have two reproductive organs called the hemipenes though only one is used at a time for mating purposes (females have corresponding twin oviducts)

- snakes even small ones are so strong and have so many muscles that it’s been found they do not kill by suffocation of the prey...they actually squeeze so hard they shut down the prey’s circulatory system...this is a much faster way for them to kill their prey and is safer for them so the prey can’t fight back long

- when feeding it’s been documented in a lab setting that their heart muscle mass can expand up to 40% for up to 48 hours post feeding...this bigger heart helps them deal with the demands of eating one bigger prey item rather than daily small meals like mammals do

- your snake doesn’t have a breastbone so it’s ribs can expand a lot to allow the prey to pass through

- your snake has a breathing tube...the glottis...so it doesn’t stop breathing while it’s swallowing down it’s prey

- snakes don’t have a diaphragm like mammals do...they must move their rib cage to breath properly...this means snakes can’t cough so if they get a respiratory infection that’s why it’s so much more dangerous for them than us

- your snake is ectothermic....that means they get their body temp from the world around them...they cannot shiver or sweat like we do to regulate body temperature....moving around is called thermoregulating and your snake has to do this to be healthy and to be warm enough to digest it’s prey

Just a few fun and interesting facts about your amazing pet snake. They are wonderfully well designed by nature aren’t they! The more we understand how they work, I think the better we can take care of them in our homes.

Jump on in folks! Share some other facts about snakes, correct mine if I've got any of them wrong, let's share that fascination we have with these lovely creatures!

[Laooda]

Great Post Jo!!!!! Gold-star stuff!

[darkangel]

Cool. The constricting-shutting-down-the-circulatory-system is awesome.

[frankykeno]

I've become really fascintated with how snake's "work" especially in digestion...here's some things that just blew me away recently....

- snakes that are ambush (aka "sit and wait") type predators like ball pythons have the ability to increase their blood flow volume up to 150-200% in the days immediately following a feed

- this increased blood flow volume goes directly to their intestines, liver, etc. to deal with digestion (which explains the temporarily enlarged heart after feeding)

- if the prey is extraordinarily large they can "waste" up to 32% of it's available caloric energy due to the above...so therefore....smaller, more frequent aka weekly meals are best for our snakes and small is better than large! (yay Adam!)

- if fed irregularily or fasting, the snake will react by shutting down it's small intestine and other high energy drawing organs

- when first fed after this time, there is a physical need to basically quickly restart it's organs causing a huge strain on the snake and wasting valuable calories....therefore especially after a fast a snake should be offered smaller than normal meals to allow it's digestive process to rebuild more slowly (always made sense to me but now I know why)

Pretty obvious as well why we should be leaving these snakes alone for that critical 48 hours or so after a feeding, isn't it.

[recycling goddess]

wow jo... where are you finding all this GREAT info?

[SarahMB]

Wow, this is some really great information to have, I'm printing it out. Thanks!
I have a question about this one:

- if the prey is extraordinarily large they can "waste" up to 32% of it's available caloric energy due to the above...so therefore....smaller, more frequent aka weekly meals are best for our snakes and small is better than large! (yay Adam!)

Does this pertain to the size and number of prety items per week? I've never been really positive about how many mice I should be feeding my snakes each week.

[recycling goddess]

i am guessing here... (not that you asked me LOL) that large or multiple would put the same strain on the snake.

[SarahMB]

All answers are welcome

So how many mice should an adult ball python get?

[frankykeno]

Basically Aleesha I'm sort of like a dog on a scent hon. If something strikes me as interesting I start googling and one site leads to another and another or another thing to google for. I love scientific papers though they are sometimes harder to dig up. I just keep digging though, sipping coffee and reading. Eventually I find evidence or backup for things I've been taught to do or instinctively figure make a lot of common sense. If you ever need them I have most of the links saved, I just don't like to flood the threads with them LOL.

Sarah, what they were specifically referencing in that study was snakes that tended to eat very large prey items (larger than girth) and also in relation to the time occurring between meals. From my understanding of this process, if the snake isn't eating for a bit of time, it basically shuts down it's digestive process, routing less blood to it and so forth. This saves the snake energy loss as these are energy sucking organs and it can't waste that energy when there is no food intake happening. Then if it eats a very large prey item (larger than girth) it has to kickstart everything back up (sort of a cold start if you get what I mean).

Digestion is a big enough deal with snakes so digesting overly large prey items, being fed infrequently or fasting just makes this process that much more enery consuming and less productive for our captive lovelies. To me this just shows me the scientific proof that what Adam's been saying all along about weekly feeds of smaller than girth rats being the way to go to keep ball pythons in top condition.

Makes sense on several fronts for me....

1) by feeding consistently and weekly the snake's digestive track will not be triggered to temporarily atrophy

2) smaller prey items each week will not place as much digestive stress on your snake

3) less stress of any sort has got to equate to a healthier snake, that's just common sense to me

4) smaller prey items do not require massive energy outputs to digest them therefore the snake should retain more percentage of caloric value from it's prey

So basically I figure this Sarah. Whether it's one rat or a few mice that equal the volume of that one small/small rat, as long as the snake's system is kept tuned up so to speak - not overfed nor fasting - it has got to work at it's most efficient and healthy level.

As far as how many mice, all I can tell you is our biggest exclusively mouse eating snake here is Doireann (05 Normal Female). She weighs as of today 1,268 grams. She generally eats 4 or 5 adult mice on feeding night. I'll try to remember to weigh them this week and get you a total weight for what she's eating per week if that helps but they are just basically normal adult size white feeder mice.

[recycling goddess]

this should be a stickie... great work jo!