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So here's a story I heard from my girlfriends little brother:
A high school classmate had/has a boa that she does not keep in a tank, in fact, the snake sleeps in bed with her at night.The snake had stopped eating for a extended period of time and she became worried and took him into the vet. The vet asked her how the snake was sleeping at night, and she explained that it was laying stretched out next to her at night. The vet instructed her no longer to let the snake sleep in bed with her.
As the story goes, the snake was sizing the girl up and had not been eating in preparation for a large meal.
Anyone ever heard about something like this?
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D. Auratus- C.R. Green&Black 0.0.6
D. Auratus -Blue 0.0.2
D. Auratus - Green and Bronze 0.0.3
D. Aurautus - Nicaraguan Green&Black 0.0.2
D. Auratus - Ancon Hill 0.0.1
D. Auratus - Retriculated Green&Black 0.0.2
D. Tinctorius - Cobalt 0.0.2
Agalychnis callidryas 1.2.0
Hyla versicolor 0.1.0
looking for D. Auratus Highlands, Super Blues, and Turquoise&Bronze
I herd that same story before somewhere else too....Do snakes not "size up" meals? Seems like it could be a possible tactic but I doubt the snake would ever actually go for the meal.
Haha, I suppose if it was a Retic or Green Anna and The bed mate was a small child, sure,or Smaller framed man or woman and the animal could apply enough force to easily disarticulate the joints of the rotator cuff of an adult making the sholders lessen in bulk they would be in for some trouble. But alas the person whom you heard this from is totally FOS..
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As environments change, no human ideal standeth sure...
first of all a snake not eating is either picky, going through seasonal changes or there's something wrong. second of all i'd like to see proof of a boa consuming a sub adult person to think the snake would even consider it. third anything a snake would consider a meal it would not be sleeping/resting up against at night... it would likely keep it's distance if it had a choice. of course while you're sleeping it does have a choice. boas aren't that big... this is not a burmese or an anaconda we're talking about here and i'd have serious doubts if someone told the same story about a burmese and a high school student... even a sub-adult or young adult anaconda.
snakes do size up their meals... it usually takes just long enough to get within striking distance. if the meal is SLIGHTLY too large it could take a couple hours to decide but if it's hungry it'll probably strike it anyway... and attempt to swallow ending in any nasty combination of regurgitation, separated scales, stretched skin, bleeding under the chin and around the base of the head and so on. if the meal is too large the snake usually will do one of a few things... 1. just curl back up hoping not to get noticed. 2. slither off to somewhere safe. 3. hiss, strike or rattle in fear/anger to warn or scare off the large animal. or 4. kill it and get away from it immediately.
snakes usually instinctively know within a certain accuracy what their limit is. most of the time they will recognize this immediately and see that they are safe from what would be otherwise a potential meal. just the ???fact??? that the snake slept next to the person repeatedly tells me that neither did the snake see the person as a threat nor did it see him as a meal either.
all in all, there is just no way this is true with the exception that the vet in question was just completely oblivious to snakes to the point he/she had absolutely no place seeing reptiles in his/her facility at all.
ah, the entertainment I was in need of on this snowy work day - thanks everyone
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D. Auratus- C.R. Green&Black 0.0.6
D. Auratus -Blue 0.0.2
D. Auratus - Green and Bronze 0.0.3
D. Aurautus - Nicaraguan Green&Black 0.0.2
D. Auratus - Ancon Hill 0.0.1
D. Auratus - Retriculated Green&Black 0.0.2
D. Tinctorius - Cobalt 0.0.2
Agalychnis callidryas 1.2.0
Hyla versicolor 0.1.0
looking for D. Auratus Highlands, Super Blues, and Turquoise&Bronze
My wife told me a very similar story going around her work lately, there is some ugly urban legend/anti constrictor propaganda floating around at this time.
(Might even be coming from one of the groups backing the recent snake bans in senate and the house.)
it's funny too... my mom just called me yesterday to tell me about the "late breaking news story about the burmese that killed the little girl in florida. apparently it was on the news in her little hick town that the snake was an illegal pet and that they're trying to prosecute based on that. funny thing is i'm a usark member and there has been no such law passed. when i tried to explain this to her she immediately turned it into a shouting match as if i were doubting her intelligence and ignoring that she simply got bad information. then she went into other things and we wound up discussing hhr 669... to which she was oblivious of course. and she said i was ludicrous even thinking that any of her pets would become illegal and hung up swiftly with me... so i left her a message with some info to look into... argh, i'm calling her now to see if she found anything. lol
Sizing up a Large Meal
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