Balls living together

[Henry Dekorte]

Question: Should I be even the slightest bit cautious about putting several ball pythons in the same aquarium? If one laid eggs, would that change the social dynamic within? Thanks.

[DaemoNox]

You should be extremely cautious if you plan on housing them together. By nature snakes are solitary, and when forced to be in an enclosure together it can cause problems and stress as they see other snakes as compitition. They can pass illnesses too each other, parasites, stress, if theres something suspicious in the enclosure like blood you wont know who it came from, feeding accidents, and so on. Males develop earlier then females and can pressure a female into breeding before its developed enough to carry and pass eggs, I even know of balls who refuse to eat when in sight of each other. Sure many people seem to house them without a problem, but things can and have happened. There is really no benefit to it. The safest way to house them together is with full extra setups for each animal, makeing sure they are of the appropriate sex, having enough experiance with the species to know and to be able to recognise the often very subtle hints of stress and need to spend more time watching them to make sure they're all doing alright.

[gonesnakee]

Long story short. Group housing = BAD! Snakes should be housed together for breeding purposes only, Mark

[mykee]

What Mark said: short and sweet. No.
"social dynamic" shouldn't be on your top 20 list of reasons why not.

[viper99]

dont put 2 balls together