Reptiles revisted

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I also did not mean to sound egotistical or patronizing. If you asked this on kingsnake or a similar site you would get some seriously angry replies.

You could conceivably keep a croc monitor on a large chain with a good harness in south florida when the weather is permitting. But that is one place out of the entire US and you would still need an indoor enclosure for bad weather and low humidity, the harness could also cause shedding problems or sores. Croc monitors do seem intelligent but so do some snakes, indigo snakes and king cobras come to mind.

Large boids can be dangerous but not nearly as dangerous as the majority of front fanged venomous snakes. There is only one precaution that you need to take in order to ensure survival of a feeding response aimed at you from a big boid, alcohol. If you have a big anaconda,retic,burm,rock python,whatever then keep a bottle of rubbing alcohol with a pop off top near the enclosure. They absolutely hate the stuff getting anywhere near their face. If it gets in their mouth or nose they will let you go. As long as you are fairly strong you can also keep a big boid from constricting you with a little technique and smart application of your strength. If one is coiled around you with most of its body and your arms are under the coils then you are correct, there is no hope of getting it off without another person. The key is to not let them do that, as soon as they start to coil you start to unwrap them from the tail up, as long as you keep you arms out from under it and try to keep the tail from ending up behind you you can unwrap it. The average adult male has more strength in their arms than a big boid has in a few feet of its body, you use your strength on parts of it instead of the whole. This is also an uncommon and avoidable situation, boids do not do this unless you unintentionally trick them into doing it. If they are pissed or afraid they will bite you, maybe more than once, they might hold on and twist a little, you may need stitches, but they will have no intention of eating or killing you. They only do that when they mistake you for food. Nearly every single case of this happening was caused by guess what, chicken soup or roast. If you feed your snake chicken or rats then wash your hands after eating chicken stew or feeding another snake a rat. Venomous snakes are just as lethal, perhaps more so when they merely want you to leave them be.

I don't have any large constrictors at the moment, I have been around some and have had an eight or so foot red tail boa in the past. I agree with the rat snake comment, those guys can be nasty. Other snakes that are often kept as 'trainers' are asian rat snakes,american watersnakes(nerodia),whip snakes, and some others that are fairly cheap and easy to care for.

PS: I forgot that there is one more cause for death by boids, letting them hang out around your neck. This is how people are killed by boa constrictors, they let a really calm snake stay on their shoulders and neck and when it gets scared it tightens up. They might not even mean to cause you any harm but a nine foot boa can cut off the blood supply to your brain and cause you to pass out or fall down in seconds. Of course falling down and banging the snake on the floor will only scare it more and people die this way, and the snake never even meant to hurt them. In fact it probably tightened up because it felt secure on them and wanted a better grip.

BTW, WHY would I get some angry replies to this question on Kingsnake.com? But more importantly, What makes you say that front-fanged elapids are more dangerous than huge constrictors. with 5000lbs of force presing down on someone, even a bodybuilder would have great difficulty getting loose! I do happen to know that FAR MORE people are killed by captive large constrictors. There actually HAVE been a number of herpers bitten by Black Mambas who manged to surivive because they were near enough to a hospital and were immediately put on ventilators. Boids are more intelligent than people think and some like the Reticulated Python will wait until EXACTLY the right moment-when you take your eyes off them and/or turn your back to them in order to strike! Thats why I dont want to be around them cuz they are FAR less predictable than elapids. King Cobra's are pretty damn smart-I have no doubt. But I do wonder if they are as smart as croc monitors. As for Florida-one would Definitely want to have a place indoors for a croc monitor in the winter when cuz they DO have cold snaps .

I also did not mean to sound egotistical or patronizing. If you asked this on kingsnake or a similar site you would get some seriously angry replies.

You could conceivably keep a croc monitor on a large chain with a good harness in south florida when the weather is permitting. But that is one place out of the entire US and you would still need an indoor enclosure for bad weather and low humidity, the harness could also cause shedding problems or sores. Croc monitors do seem intelligent but so do some snakes, indigo snakes and king cobras come to mind.

Large boids can be dangerous but not nearly as dangerous as the majority of front fanged venomous snakes. There is only one precaution that you need to take in order to ensure survival of a feeding response aimed at you from a big boid, alcohol. If you have a big anaconda,retic,burm,rock python,whatever then keep a bottle of rubbing alcohol with a pop off top near the enclosure. They absolutely hate the stuff getting anywhere near their face. If it gets in their mouth or nose they will let you go. As long as you are fairly strong you can also keep a big boid from constricting you with a little technique and smart application of your strength. If one is coiled around you with most of its body and your arms are under the coils then you are correct, there is no hope of getting it off without another person. The key is to not let them do that, as soon as they start to coil you start to unwrap them from the tail up, as long as you keep you arms out from under it and try to keep the tail from ending up behind you you can unwrap it. The average adult male has more strength in their arms than a big boid has in a few feet of its body, you use your strength on parts of it instead of the whole. This is also an uncommon and avoidable situation, boids do not do this unless you unintentionally trick them into doing it. If they are pissed or afraid they will bite you, maybe more than once, they might hold on and twist a little, you may need stitches, but they will have no intention of eating or killing you. They only do that when they mistake you for food. Nearly every single case of this happening was caused by guess what, chicken soup or roast. If you feed your snake chicken or rats then wash your hands after eating chicken stew or feeding another snake a rat. Venomous snakes are just as lethal, perhaps more so when they merely want you to leave them be.

I don't have any large constrictors at the moment, I have been around some and have had an eight or so foot red tail boa in the past. I agree with the rat snake comment, those guys can be nasty. Other snakes that are often kept as 'trainers' are asian rat snakes,american watersnakes(nerodia),whip snakes, and some others that are fairly cheap and easy to care for.

PS: I forgot that there is one more cause for death by boids, letting them hang out around your neck. This is how people are killed by boa constrictors, they let a really calm snake stay on their shoulders and neck and when it gets scared it tightens up. They might not even mean to cause you any harm but a nine foot boa can cut off the blood supply to your brain and cause you to pass out or fall down in seconds. Of course falling down and banging the snake on the floor will only scare it more and people die this way, and the snake never even meant to hurt them. In fact it probably tightened up because it felt secure on them and wanted a better grip.

Because there are many angry people on the venomous boards at kingsnake.

The reason there are more boid related deaths is because there are more boids in the hands of inexperienced keepers. Boids are also underestimated by many. That could very well be the truth about retics but if they do that it is not going to be a feeding response and it will only result in stitches. Many elapids are predictable since they hood up and what not but not all are, kraits are certainly not predictable. You shouldn't turn your back on anything that can kill you anyways.
Anacondas are also pretty unpredictable but they don't seem to be that prone to trying to eat you, just bite. I would worry the most about aussie scrubs and african rock pythons, they are both really unpleasant. Either way i think we are splitting hairs here, cobras and sixteen foot retics are both worthy of respect and caution.

And Splitting Hairs is what being an Aspie as all about!

LOL that is so true.

Sounds pretty accurate . Like I said before: I wanna yellow rat snake. Pretty good sized, not to mention they're nice and mean(but not venomous) They're notorious for biting when kept in captivity. What do you know about them EvilKimEvil? As far as non-venomous snakes are concerned I really like Rat Snakes quite a bit.

D1nk0 wrote:

BTW, WHY would I get some angry replies to this question on Kingsnake.com?

A lot of the older, more experienced herpers are bitter about the ways in which the hobby is changing. Keeping any kind of herp, especially snakes, used to be considered a weird, geeky, little-known hobby that you had to actively seek out to get involved in. Kind of like keeping cockroaches today, maybe.

Over the past ten years or so, herping has become a lot more popular and a lot more accessible. It's easy to impulsively buy just about any kind of herp, but it's still hard to find good information about most species. The self-education aspect still requires some time and effort. Therefore, as you might imagine, there are a lot of people who buy dangerous and/or demanding reptiles at herp shows and never bother to read anything about them. Their lack of responsibility leads to accidents like envenomation, escapes, neglect-induced problems in the animals, etc. These accidents lead to laws being passed against keeping certain kinds of herps, and the responsible people end up being punished for the actions of a few irresponsible people.

This is what these people think of when they see questions like, "What's a good beginner hot?", "Can I keep my king cobra in a 20 gallon aquarium with my ball python?", etc. When someone asks a question that could be answered by doing a basic Google search, it implies that they are not taking the time to learn how to care for their animals. People get angry because this is reflective of a larger trend that is hurting the hobby and causing captive herps to suffer from neglect.

Personally, I do not think they should be directing this anger towards anyone who asks an easily-answered question, but I think it's kind of interesting so I enjoy explaining it.

I think gray rat snakes look the best out of the north american ones. Yellow+racing stripes=
Gray/black+squares/diamonds/circles+red/yellow between scales=

Heh, those are two of my favorite snakes as well. I think king rats have the nickname "stinking goddess" due to that unpleasant defense mechanism. I wish they would just bite, I hate dealing with snakes that are well nasty.

My favorite rat snakes are the various subspecies of Elaphe porphyracea, especially E. p. coxi. One of these subspecies is sometimes called the trinket snake. Is that the one you're interested in? Apparently, most Elaphe porphyracea are wild-caught and difficult to maintain, but if you could find a CB hatchling with a good feeding history, it might not be so bad. Anyway, I think any almost any Colubrid, especially an Elaphe species, would be easier to start out with than Naja padilla.

I have heard the name "yellow rat snake" only as another name for the common corn snake, Elaphe gattata. What are the Latin names of the species you're interested in? Common names for herps are very confusing; that's why the use of Latin names is so common-place.

There's another herp site that I highly recommend, especially for information on lizards. It does not have a forum, but it contains a lot of information about specific species and herp keeping in general:

http://www.anapsid.org/

It's like a free encyclopedia that's actually well-written and well-researched, although the author does express her own opinions instead of remaining neutral on all topics. Best of all, she does not sound condescending or bitter (to me at least).

I believe he was referring to Elaphe obsoleta quadrivitata. I probably spelled that wrong. King rat snake is Elaphe carinata. I don't know the binomial name for the taiwan beauty snake. Or if you use the proposed Pantherophis genus then I think the yellow rat snake would be Pantherophis spiloides.

Aha! I didn't even know about the new genus. I only started to take interest in rat snakes recently, after seeing the Elaphe porphyracea coxi at the San Antonio Zoo.

I just looked it up and found out that the Taiwanese beauty snake is Elaphe taeniura friesi. Here's some info about them: