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

[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.

[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Just throwing that out there as I hear people repeat old outdated info a good bit and just want people to understand the species better.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]

Originally Posted by Andy_G

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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