How Do I Convince My Woma Python That I Am Not Food?

[SerpentineDream]

Ophelia, my juvenile woma python, has been home about 2 weeks now and is eating well. So well, in fact, that she would like to eat me. I wash my hands before handling her to get any scents off, so maybe I just smell tasty. I pick her up and she promptly begins constricting my hand. Then she slowly and deliberately opens her mouth and makes a move to bite and presumably swallow whatever part of my hand is conveniently close. I use my other hand to get a hold of her neck and restrain her, but the second I let her go she's at it again. I have half a mind to just let her bite me. After a few not so fun minutes she should (I hope) realize that I am not edible and let go, and should (I hope) not try it again. Python bites suck. I'd rather not. Any other ideas?

[PsychoSnake]

Feed her more. Grow the beast until she bursts!

That's usually the only way I can get some of my very food aggressive rosy boas to calm down. I look like a floating drumstick to them. I can even see it in their eyes. The intense stare! They have no other concept than food goes in the belly and everything is food. One of them even tried to eat a comforter for an hour and just would not give up. They flail their mouths open crazily whenever something comes by them.

Brumating in the winter seemed to help too.

[IW17]

Ophelia, my juvenile woma python, has been home about 2 weeks now and is eating well. So well, in fact, that she would like to eat me. I wash my hands before handling her to get any scents off, so maybe I just smell tasty. I pick her up and she promptly begins constricting my hand. Then she slowly and deliberately opens her mouth and makes a move to bite and presumably swallow whatever part of my hand is conveniently close. I use my other hand to get a hold of her neck and restrain her, but the second I let her go she's at it again. I have half a mind to just let her bite me. After a few not so fun minutes she should (I hope) realize that I am not edible and let go, and should (I hope) not try it again. Python bites suck. I'd rather not. Any other ideas?

Wish I could help. My water python does the same thing after more than two years. I've just decided she's for display purposes. Fine by me. However if you're not OK with that, I can see the problem.

[REM955]

Have you done tap training? I am only "parrotting" a youtube video series by a woma breeder who does this regardless of age.

[SerpentineDream]

I confess ignorance. I don't know about tap training, but I am all ears!

[Albert Clark]

Try washing your hands in very cold water instead of hot bc the heat signature in your hands is another trigger. It may help. But yeah , definitely feed him a larger prey item or increase the feeding frequency. Consider a hand sanitizer as well before handling.

[REM955]

https://youtu.be/gkrPpwLRnR8
Here is the guy I'd like to get a Woma from. He goes over tap training here as well.
Basically, tap with a snake hook before going to pick them up.

[jpsteele80]

When i got my rough scale pythons they were both really into biting me, the male settled down fairly quickly but the female would continue to take a shot at me any chance she could get, i just took the bites and she finally is starting to settle down, last time i had her out i got no bites, its hard to tell as each animal is different. you could try handling her with gloves and see if that helps, if she bypasses your hands but goes for your arms most likely she is hungry and is biting the heat source. You may also just have an animal that is always going to be aggressive, only time will tell.

[Tsubaki]

All my retics think I'm made of food, tap training is the only thing that works :)

[macandchz]

just be thank-ful it loves to eat! i get tired of trying to coax mac to eat well. he does great for a few then off for a few. i wonder how he keeps gaining weight?

[SerpentineDream]

My ball python can require a great deal of convincing. Not so with Ophelia.

So I offered her another and slightly larger mouse. She's been eating hoppers, but I looked at her body width and figured she could step up. Unfortunately I failed to account for the little bitty woma head. She took a small adult mouse with gusto and I immediately realized she would have some trouble, but at that point there was no getting it back. She didn't give up. She got that mouse down, and it stayed down. But it was a big stretch for her mouth and since then she's been yawning a lot and rubbing her face on things. I think she might have strained her jaws. Will she be OK?

I learned from that mistake and will stick to hoppers for now, just feeding more often. Tap training will commence forthwith. I'll try the cold water handwashing and sanitizer too. Alcohol kills my skin but I suspect the alcohol scent is probably a deterrent so will have to deal. I'm also ordering welding gloves, which I hope will be enough to stop bites if she keeps it up. BTW it is really hard to find welding gloves in my size. I take a women's small or extra small (I have to shop in the children's department for winter gloves... for years my winter gloves had a Hannah Montana motif). Welding gloves, raptor gloves--all the heavy duty stuff--are made for people with giant hands. Sigh.

[PatrickT]

Ophelia, my juvenile woma python, has been home about 2 weeks now and is eating well. So well, in fact, that she would like to eat me. I wash my hands before handling her to get any scents off, so maybe I just smell tasty. I pick her up and she promptly begins constricting my hand. Then she slowly and deliberately opens her mouth and makes a move to bite and presumably swallow whatever part of my hand is conveniently close. I use my other hand to get a hold of her neck and restrain her, but the second I let her go she's at it again. I have half a mind to just let her bite me. After a few not so fun minutes she should (I hope) realize that I am not edible and let go, and should (I hope) not try it again. Python bites suck. I'd rather not. Any other ideas?

its a snake and not a rabbit. Watch her and don´t grab her. I never had any issues with my womas. I let them crawl on my arm and thats it.

[Karilyne]

https://youtu.be/gkrPpwLRnR8
Here is the guy I'd like to get a Woma from. He goes over tap training here as well.
Basically, tap with a snake hook before going to pick them up.

I love this guy! I've used hook training with my Woma since I brought her home and she is puppy dog tame. :)

[Andy_G]

My ball python can require a great deal of convincing. Not so with Ophelia.

So I offered her another and slightly larger mouse. She's been eating hoppers, but I looked at her body width and figured she could step up. Unfortunately I failed to account for the little bitty woma head. She took a small adult mouse with gusto and I immediately realized she would have some trouble, but at that point there was no getting it back. She didn't give up. She got that mouse down, and it stayed down. But it was a big stretch for her mouth and since then she's been yawning a lot and rubbing her face on things. I think she might have strained her jaws. Will she be OK?

I learned from that mistake and will stick to hoppers for now, just feeding more often. Tap training will commence forthwith. I'll try the cold water handwashing and sanitizer too. Alcohol kills my skin but I suspect the alcohol scent is probably a deterrent so will have to deal. I'm also ordering welding gloves, which I hope will be enough to stop bites if she keeps it up. BTW it is really hard to find welding gloves in my size. I take a women's small or extra small (I have to shop in the children's department for winter gloves... for years my winter gloves had a Hannah Montana motif). Welding gloves, raptor gloves--all the heavy duty stuff--are made for people with giant hands. Sigh.

I think your woma would be fine on adult mice. Furthermore, I am uncertain what washing with cold water will achieve in this circumstance because womas lack heat pits. They eat a lot of reptiles as well as mammals in the wild and anything that touches any part of their body can result in a feeding strike type response due to how they would react if something touched them in a burrow in the wild. It doesn't have to be something warm touching them to trigger this response. Keep up with the tap training and your woma should eventually get that your pinkies aren't actually pinkies. ;)

[pet_snake_78]

I consider a strong feeding response a good thing, I wish every snake I owned were so aggressive in feeding!

[SerpentineDream]

Andy, she wasn't satisfied on the hopper mice so I did cave and let her tackle small adult mice. She got used to the stretch but she was still restlessly cruising her cage after meals so now we're trying rat fuzzies to see if those fill her up better. She loves them (no surprise there, right?)

That makes sense about the lack of heat pits. I hadn't considered that.

Here she is hiding behind her magic rock, stalking me. She looks cute, but 2 seconds after this picture was taken she popped out from behind her hide and attacked the glass with her mouth wide open to swallow me whole. I had to laugh at her optimism. In fairness, it was feeding day and she knew it.

We'll get there! :) The hook is our friend.

http://i1361.photobucket.com/albums/r669/Serpentine_Dream/Mobile%20Uploads/20160508_234222_zps5hvzmxp1.jpg (http://s1361.photobucket.com/user/Serpentine_Dream/media/Mobile%20Uploads/20160508_234222_zps5hvzmxp1.jpg.html)

[Derek Roddy]

Actually womas and blackheadednpythons both DO have a heat pit. This was proven about 10 years ago when a friend of mine and a buddy did a study on the horse shoe shaped pit under their rostral scale.
Just throwing that out there as I hear people repeat old outdated info a good bit and just want people to understand the species better.

Here is a copy of the original paper about the rostral pit.

A New Type of Infrared Sensitive Organ in the Python Aspidites sp.
by Guido Westhoff Shaun P. Collin
Pythons are well known to possess an infrared sense enabling them to perceive infrared radiation. It is believed that the infrared sense is mainly used to localise their warm blooded prey. The infrared sensitive organs are comprised of infrared sensitive thermoreceptors, which are embedded within specialised pits of the labial scales. Infrared signals are detected by these pits lined with thermoreceptors, which project to the cns via the trigeminal nerve and a specialised nucleus within the hindbrain (nucleus of the lateral descending trigeminal tract: nLTTD) to be relayed towards the midbrain and forebrain. The nLTTD is only found in infrared sensitive snakes. Aspidites sp. are the only members of the Pythoninae that do not possess labial pits. The lack of labial pits and thus the obvious lack of the infrared sense in Aspidites have been interpreted in the past either as a primitive character of this genus or as a secondarily loss due to the fact that these pythons feed on-cold blooded prey. We investigated a conspicuous U-shaped single pit located in the rostralia of Aspidites sp. which points downward in a resting specimen but clearly faces forward if the python raises its head. The rostral position and the overall shape of the pit allow frontal object localisation to be mediated by shadowing, where certain regions of the pit are differentially stimulated with regard to the position of objects in front of the animal. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) has confirmed that the ultrastructure of the fundus of the pit resembles the fundus of labial pits in other pythons i.e. it possesses enlarged shingle like cells with micropits. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) also reveals the presence of typical infrared thermoreceptors within the pit that are not found in other scales. Furthermore, the brain of Aspidites melanocephalus reveals a structure that can be regarded as a nLTTD. We propose that Aspidites clearly possesses an infrared sense and the unusual position of the single, downwardly-directed pit in the rostralia has evolved in response to its fossorial lifestyle i.e. to avoid damage to the pit from soil and debris. This arrangement is clearly different to the open labial pits of other pythons, which are directed laterally from the head. This work was partly supported by the Feodor-Lynen program of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
Type: oral contribution
Theme: reptiles, snakes, morphology
Entity: Westhoff: Institute of Zoology University of Bonn Poppelsdorfer Schloss 53115 Bonn, GERMANY e-mail: gwesthof@uni-bonn.de Collin: Room A205 Ritchie Research Laboratories School of Biomedical Sciences The University of Queensland Brisbane, Queensland 4072 Australia e-mail: s.collin@uq.edu.au"



As far as the food response bites..... Most womas are like this and not much of anything you can do other than wait it out and hope it grows out of it. Some of them do..... Some of them don't.

Cheers
D

[Albert Clark]

I think your woma would be fine on adult mice. Furthermore, I am uncertain what washing with cold water will achieve in this circumstance because womas lack heat pits. They eat a lot of reptiles as well as mammals in the wild and anything that touches any part of their body can result in a feeding strike type response due to how they would react if something touched them in a burrow in the wild. It doesn't have to be something warm touching them to trigger this response. Keep up with the tap training and your woma should eventually get that your pinkies aren't actually pinkies. ;)

Your uncertainty can be quelled by the fact that hand washing with cold water decreases the heat signature primarily and removes any smell that might contribute to a feeding strike by any snake. Heat has a odor and can be detected by smell as well as heat sensors. You don't think a snakes Jacobson's organ can detect heat???

[Andy_G]

Thanks for all of that information Derek! I stand corrected.

Albert, I honestly hadn't considered that in this situation but it makes sense.

[Albert Clark]

Thanks for all of that information Derek! I stand corrected.

Albert, I honestly hadn't considered that in this situation but it makes sense.

It's all good! I didn't know that information that Derek put forth about the heat receptors in Womas. However, i was aware of the specialised chemical and odor detection in the jacobsons organ.

[Derek Roddy]

No worries y'all...haha.

In short, there is basically no way to fool them into thinking you aren't food if they have a strong response. Only thing you can do is "curb" the response by how you interact with them.

D