Comments on: How to avoid being bit by your pet snake

By: Mikkel

Mikkel — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:55:00 +0000

My snakes both bit my dad. i have 2 Snakes. Green Rat Snake and a Californian king Snake. Once we tryed feeding my Cali king snake we afterwards tryed to take out like 10 minutes after. He went insane and bit my dad like 6 times in his thumb and now im kinda afraid holding him… Usually he ONLY shits all over me.

By: Pet Snakes

Pet Snakes — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 16:23:00 +0000

Have you changed the type of soap you use to wash your hands before you reach into the tank? Sometimes certain scents will cause a snake to react like that.

By: Kmitchell8984

Kmitchell8984 — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 18:18:00 +0000

I have a redtail boa about 4ft an one day after he got done eating as I reached in to remove him from the feeding box he bite me,so im curious should I wait a little longer before I try to remove him?

By: Saintsrow0721

Saintsrow0721 — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 18:57:00 +0000

Would like to add everytime you go to pick up Cornsnakes/Pythons do so with confidence if your hands in the viv dont keep hesitating and move your hand back and forth Snake are awesome are smelling fear and they thrive off it. If you show Confidence then your snake will have Confidence in YOU.

By: Pet Snakes

Pet Snakes — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 00:47:00 +0000

With all due respect to your husband it sounds like he has been watching too many movies. Snakes, despite what the movies and other popular culture would have us believe are not vengeful animals. Getting a taste of human blood is not going to cause them to desire more of it. Here is very likely what happened.

You began cleaning the snake’s cage and it saw your hand movement and went into feeding mode. Keep in mind that anything can trigger a feeding response in a snake. It doesn’t have to be actual food. Anyhow, it saw your hand and went into feeding mode and struck and latched on.

Remember your thumb is a warm, living object, just what a snake wants to eat. Further evidence that it was in feeding mode and not defensive of its territory was that it didn’t let go. Had it just been trying to get rid of an invader it would have struck and let go. Perhaps multiple times.

But it held on and then you no doubt yanked the snake out of its home and began yanking and prying at its mouth to get your thumb free. The snake became even more panic stricken and decided it was in a fight for its life so it held on for dear life. I can guarantee you it wasn’t holding on so it could gorge itself on your blood. At that point it had no concern for your thumb or the blood. It only knew it had been ripped from its home and there was probably a great deal of commotion going on.

The fact is that if your son has a snake he will, and let me emphasis this as much as possible… HE WILL BE BITTEN AT SOME POINT. Snakes are wild animals and have to be treated as such. People also have to expect that they will act like wild animals and bite them. Some snakes bite every time you go near them and others only bite on rare occasion.