Quote:
Originally Posted by FWK
I have a young Bull Snake with a fearsome feeding response. A few months ago I reached into his enclosure to grab his water bowl when he shot out of a hide like he was spring loaded and latched onto my hand. I didn't move as he started to throw the first coil over my hand when he suddenly disengaged and vanished back into his hide. I didn't think for a second that he let go because he knew it was me or that he didn't want to hurt me, he let go because he realized he bit something much bigger than he could handle and if he didn't get out of there he was going to get hurt. Prey fight back.
I don't think there is much real debate as to the level of intelligence in snakes. Spend a bit of time studying the nervous system of a snake at it will quickly become pretty clear to you that they do not have the capacity for intelligence warm blooded animals do. But within the hobbyist community there is some debate as individuals are often blind to reason when it comes to their pets because they become overly attached to the animal(s) in question and typically assign human qualities to their beloved pets (the technical term is anthropomorphism but I like to call it crazy cat lady syndrome).
Snakes do seem to have some ability to learn, for example my snakes seem to know that if there is movement outside their enclosures (as in, I'm walking around in the snake room) there is a good chance food is on the way. And over time they learn that I am not a threat and picking them up will no longer trigger a fight or flight response. But is this truly knowledge they can actively employ or simply a conditioned response? Personally I think it is a little bit of both (leaning more towards a conditioned response overall) but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of legitimate research on the subject, at least not that I can find. I am very much open to new ideas if you know of any research/articles on the subject.
There are a number of cases of snakes swallowing a persons arm and refusing to let go until forcibly removed. I don't think the snake wouldn't let go because it didn't have a strong enough bond with the individual, the snake wouldn't let go because it didn't "realize" it had made a mistake (there wasn't enough stimuli to override the feeding response).
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Great feedback! I think it's probably a 99% chance that it's just him realizing Im to big or a weak feeding response. It was just a weird feeling that's all I can say.
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