Learning and memory

[unipt]

Can corns learn and remember occasions? Mine seems to have learned/remember that the blue paper tissue means there's food in there. I can put it in the opposite side of her she is and in a few seconds she will go to the tissue and start looking and pressing her head against it.

 

[bitsy]

When they escape, they always seem to go back and try that same place again. I think there's something to it.

 

[hypnoctopus]

My little sister's corn is a nice snake, but always gets strikey when you put him in his feeding tub. It seems pretty obvious that he remembers that this is where he gets fed.

 

[Jenn]

Your question got me really thinking, I did a quick google search and found one study that was summarized on this forum:
http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5963

Apparently corns do have the ability to learn and remember, at least rudimentary tasks like the one described in this study.

All I can really find is this particular study, here's a good, quick-to-the-point summary of the results:

"After four trials a day for four days, the snakes learned to go directly to the hole with the shelter. He found that on average, it took the snakes a little less than 12 minutes to find the hidden shelter on the first try. On the second try, most found the shelter after about 7 minutes, and some even found it after 30 seconds. He also found that older snakes were slower to learn than younger snakes. When the colors were changed, younger snakes learned faster than older snakes, showing that the younger snakes were more adaptable to visual cues. " (quoted from--http://www.naturescornermagazine.com/snakes_learn.html)