Anyone hear some Barry White???

[AnniesMom]

So they started acting up and my husband said" Let them have their fun" and this is what they spent the weekend doing.
http://ssnakess.com/photopost/data/508/3225Breeding_5_Honey_Jake.jpg
http://ssnakess.com/photopost/data/508/3225Breeding_7_Honey_Jake.jpg
http://ssnakess.com/photopost/data/508/3225Breeding_1_Honey_Jake.jpg

I feel like a peeping tom. I was reading Jeff Rohnne's article about breeding boas to my husband and he said " Are you going to be this excited during the whole process?" It's very exciting! Last year they made motions for a while like they wanted to mate, but Honey Bun was underweight and Jake began to get sick. He is now totally healed and his chin almost looks normal again. Thank God for Polysporin!!! Next time I split them, I will try to get a picture of his chin now, and post before and after pictures.

[Linds]

Good luck with the pairing!

[madison.s]

good luck,barry white all the way.

[Jeff_Favelle]

In August? Were they cycled at all? Wonder if the male's sperm will still be viable?

Best of luck though! Those are GREAT shots!! :D

[AnniesMom]

Thanks Linds, Liz and Jeff.

Jeff: There was no cycling done at all. They decided to do this with no input on my part. (personally, I don't believe in casual, pre-marital sex, but hey, I'm just the Mom. No one ever listens to me) I have no idea if this nooky will produce anything. This interest in each other seems to be spontaneous. Because of the interest, I put them back together as they have live seperately since Jake was sick last year. And thanks, I just got a new camera and am playing with it.

[MouseKilla]

I have recently had a pair of BPs together on a temporary basis while I sort out some caging issues and have caught them in the act a few times now. I have obviously not even begun cooling them yet so I don't expect them to be sexually productive, not counting on any eggs that's for sure. lol!

I was expecting that they'd hide at opposite ends of the cage until one was removed, but to the contrary they seem to almost "like" eachother which is just weird when we always hear that it will stress them out to have another snake around. They don't fight or hide from eachother but instead are entwined more often than not. Similar thermoregulation needs probably explain most of this behaviour but in my limited experience a stressed snake will choose security over other needs like heat and water. Thermoregulation won't explain the other filthy things they've been up to though so that behaviour remains a curiosity to me, maybe it's recreational.

Now I'm not fooling myself into thinking that they actually enjoy the presence of the other snake (I can't help thinking they might though when I see their tails all twisted together!) but they are certainly more tolerant of it than I thought they would be, definitely as much or more tolerant of eachother as they are of routine handling.

I will be seperating them again very soon because, well the list of reasons is long and we all know them, but I have found observing them together to be interesting and harmless (as far as I know or can tell the humping is harmless anyway) for that reason I feel less guilty about shacking them up together. For the record, I didn't want to do this with them and I wouldn't reccomend it to anyone else, it is nearly always easier and smarter to cage them seperately. I would be interested to hear from anyone who has any insight on the off-season copulations though I don't imagine many people have observed it.

[AnniesMom]

I'm convinved that Jake and Honey like being together, but I'm a bad one for giving human emotions to non-human things (like I'm sure that my fire dept pager knows when I'm going pee and decides that time to go off! ARRGH) However, when I went to seperate Jake and Honey to feed them, Jake hissed at me! Not when I touched him, but when I started to take Honey from the cage. Curioser and curiouser! Honey just shed out a couple of days ago, and they both seem very content to curl up together and they seem to move from one end of the cage to the other with each other. Besides, now that I am looking after a California Kingsnake that came with an appetite and a tiny UTH that the people had stuffed under a rock, I can use the empty cage. Until I get the King's cage. We'll see what they have for it.