teaching bps

[Mogley837]

is it possible to like pat on the ground and have your bp come to you?
ever heard of that?
if so how would I go about teaching sgt pepper that?

[Freakie_frog]

is it possible to like pat on the ground and have your bp come to you?
ever heard of that?
if so how would I go about teaching sgt pepper that?

Balls despite what some might think don't like human contact. So a positive reinforcement training would be useless. So I'll say no.

[Mogley837]

sgt pepper loves human contact though I scratch his belly and he seems to like it and when I scratch his neck too
hes never bitten anyone even when shedding and I can feed him from my hands
I just hold the rat by his tail and he goes right for it

[frankykeno]

Sorry to say dear but your snake really isn't capable of "loving human contact". By all standards, snakes can be handled in ways that they learn to accept it without too much stress but they simply are not the sorts of creatures that by their nature need contact even with their own species (other than to breed of course).

Also feeding from your hand is a bad habit to get into. The heat signature coming off your hand will at some point confuse your snake and you will get bit - it's just a matter of time. A feeding bite is a serious one, not a slight tap, but the strike of a predator and it should be respected for what it is. Your response most likely would be to jerk back from the bite which can injure your snake's mouth as well as make the bite worse on you.

When you scratch your snake's belly it will naturally undulate. This isn't a function of the snake "enjoying" that, it is the scutes (belly scales) reacting to stimulus. This is a perfectly normal reaction and something that all snakes do.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't love your snake or enjoy it but just a a bit of a gentle caution about realizing what a snake is and isn't capable of being. It is perfect in itself but it isn't like other pets like a cat or dog.

[Freakie_frog]

Emotion has no use in the animal kingdom. Kevin McCurley

[frankykeno]

I think emotion in us as keepers is a wonderful thing. It keeps us striving to do right by our snakes because we truly love and respect them. Confusing our human emotions with their natural instincts or abilities though can lead to problems or misunderstandings.

Kev's got it right! Hardly a workable system if the snake had emotions and some sort of moral issues with eating a live rat. LOL

Mogley, sorry I did mean to answer your original question about patting the ground, etc. Snakes hear by vibrations which they pick up through their bellies and their lower jaws. They have no external ears so it's unknown what, if any sounds they hear in the way we humans do. Patting the ground causing a vibration is most likely to trigger your snake into an S aka strike position. The snake will either do this defensively if it perceives that vibration as an approaching predator or aggressively if it perceives that vibration as the approach of a possible prey animal. It might also choose to react by balling up tightly to protect it's head or in slithering off quickly to seek cover.

Either way it's not going to come when it's "called".

[Freakie_frog]

I think emotion in us as keepers is a wonderful thing. It keeps us striving to do right by our snakes because we truly love and respect them. Confusing our human emotions with their natural instincts or abilities though can lead to problems or misunderstandings.

Kev's got it right! Hardly a workable system if the snake had emotions and some sort of moral issues with eating a live rat. LOL

Anthropomorphism is how we as humans associate with the world around us. The idea of a creature without the ability to express its wants and needs is alien to us and as such we cope with this by transmitting our ingrain behaviors on those things without them in order to better identify with that thing.

In short you ball tolerates your handling and lacks the higher brain function to make the decisions needed to be trained. However it is a novel concept and if I could I teach each of mine to form a different letter of the alphabet so I could write messages in pythons

[jeffjr464]

they are wild animals, which act as wild animals should although balls are so docile people mistake it for affection

[frankykeno]

Anthropomorphism is how we as humans associate with the world around us. The idea of a creature without the ability to express its wants and needs is alien to us and as such we cope with this by transmitting our ingrain behaviors on those things without them in order to better identify with that thing.

Totally agree. The problem becomes when we humans forget to set limits on this type of behaviour and you see things like "my snake loves to go for car rides", "my snake loves me so I keep it with me all day long", "my snake enjoys going to the pet store with me", "my snake bit me so I know it hates me", etc.

[wolfy-hound]

To train an animal you need something to reward it with that it wants. Unfortunately snakes generally want privacy and warmth. If every time your snake came to you, you flipped on a heat bulb(your body warmth is not all that much warmth as far as a reward) then eventually(maybe YEARS) you MIGHT get a response that could be called a "learned response". It would take so long because of more than one factor.
1. Snakes do not have any willingness to please. Dogs have this, and it makes them easier to train.
2. Snake do not generally have a reward to strive for. A food treat, or heat or privacy are all difficult to offer a snake.
3. Snakes have a low metabolism, and lower intelligence, without much need for problem solving in their lives. These combined make them disinclined to strive for any reward.
These and other factors make it highly unlikely that you can train your ball python. It MIGHT go towards a light vibration as a instinctive searching for prey reaction. But that would strictly be a 'hit or miss' thing, according to whether or not the snake felt hungry, nervous, or energetic at that time.
Ball pythons are pretty much a sit and wait type animal. Makes it nigh impossible to train them.
Wolfy