• Hello!

    Either you have not registered on this site yet, or you are registered but have not logged in. In either case, you will not be able to use the full functionality of this site until you have registered, and then logged in after your registration has been approved.

    Registration is FREE, so please register so you can participate instead of remaining a lurker....

    Please be certain that the location field is correctly filled out when you register. All registrations that appear to be bogus will be rejected. Which means that if your location field does NOT match the actual location of your registration IP address, then your registration will be rejected.

    Sorry about the strictness of this requirement, but it is necessary to block spammers and scammers at the door as much as possible.

Clever or lazy

Menher

Menher

Menher
My 7 month old corn (Jasper) has been on defrosted fuzzies for around a month now. I have tried 3 times to see if he will strike at them and constrict. The first time he did but the 2nd and 3rd he just took it at a leisurely pace as if he either knew it was dead or couldn't be bothered. Is he too clever or just idle?

Cheers all.
 
Proabably a bit of both. The instinct is to conserve and preserve as much energy as possible...maximum benefit for minimum effort. So why strike and constrict, which requires a substantial amount of energy, if the prey is already subdued to the point that it can be consumed without fear of injury or escape?

In this case, I believe the "laziness" is due to the snake being clever...;).
 
I think it's just instinct.

A Corn will constrict live prey not only to kill it, but to keep it still so that it isn't able to bite.

Once the Corn learns that a defrosted mouse doesn't fight or bite, it won't waste valuable physical resources by going through the roly-poly-kill routine. To a cold-blooded animal, energy is very precious and conservation of it is a priority - avoiding unnecessary movement is a great way to acheive that. For a Corn Snake, a defrosted mouse is a "cheap" meal in terms of the effort needed to eat it.

Having said that, I do have a couple that still constrict like crazy, despite never having seen a live mouse in all their years!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top