My friend has a python and feeds it only one mouse a week. How does all of the protein for muscle and growth come from only one little mouse a week???
Add all those little mice up over the months/years; there’s quite a bit of raw material there. It’s not so much of question of the snake extracting more out of it’s food compared to say a fox, but of wasting less by being cold-blooded; the python isn’t burning a lot of energy with high-paced metabolic processes and radiating the waste heat away like our other furry little mouse-eating predator would.
In other words, the snake and the fox would extract similar amounts of nutrition from a mouse, but the fox’s biological “engine” is idling at 2500 RPM while the python’s is barely chugging away at 250 RPM, and the snake would need less fuel to grow or just live than the fox.
Ectothermic animals like snakes don’t have to “waste” nearly as much energy keeping their body at a particular ( high ) internal thermostat setting compared to an an endothermic animal like us. In addition an ambush predator like a python has to utilize a lot less energy than an active predator in acquiring food. Also snakes have very efficient digestion systems that pretty much breaks down the whole critter and wastes very little. The end result of all the above is that they don’t need a lot of food to keep the engine toned and running.
- Tamerlane
A snake that eats a mouse a week is making a pig of itself. Snakes can get by with only a couple mice a year!
Plus if you notice, your friends python does very little moving around, let alone the snake equivilent of sprinting. It probably expends the most amount of energy when it captures the meal of the week and suffocates it.
-Yea, in grade school the son of the shop teacher I had kept rattlesnakes as pets; the teacher told us that full-grown 8-footers only eat one adult rabbit a year, “growing” ones got one rabbit every 8 months.
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“Snakes in zoo’s and laboratories sometimes do not eat for many months. Large snakes, such as boas and pythons, commonly go without food for more than a year. Even some small snakes may fast for a period of six to 12 months. Unlike warm-blooded animals, snakes do not need much energy to maintain a steady body temperature. Snakes also remain inactive for extended periods of time and so use up little energy. In addition, snakes have extensive tissues that store FAT. during long fasts, they live off this fat”
“An African Gaboon viper in a zoo once fasted for two and a half years”
- The World Book Encyclopedia
And yet here is an article about the world’s longest snake (nearly 50 feet) which eats up to 5 dogs a month. No details on whether they are toy poodles or mastiffs.
so then, where does all the muscle come from?? no exercise = no muscle build up.
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- Genetics, scooter - everything yo momma told you was a lie.
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- Genetics, scooter - everything yo momma told you was a lie.
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Maybe they do Pilates while they’re basking?
Hail Ants- Actually, if you only feed a baby snake 3 or 4 times a year, it’ll starve.
Siiiince I try to know a lot about this, I’ll try to be Mrs I-Know-A-Lot-About-Snakes-But-Not-All. I’m not being rude, but I know, through experience, that a lot of people, well, don’t know much about snakes.
Snakes (at least in captivity) should be fed something about as big around as it’s thickest point. If a snake’s only capable of eating a mouse, it’s still very young. All I currently have are Ball Pythons, who grow slowly. They START OUT on mice. By 1 year, you switch them to rat weanlings (4 week old rats). Thus, if a snake is capable of eating nothing but mice, it’d quickly starve to death on 3-4 times a year. Now, a lot of other Pythons grow more quickly than Ball Pythons (Blood Pythons, Reticulated Pythons [who can get to - I believe - 4-6 feet in their first year, Burmese Pythons [same size in 1st year as a Reticulated] etc), so the “mouse phase” would be much shorter.
There’s a difference between being healthy and “getting by.” Sure, an adult snakes can live YEARS without eating. Is it healthy for them? God no.
There’s also a difference between snakes fasting, and owners thinking, “well, snakes only need to eat three times a year.” (Or, in the case of the science teacher with a Rattler, once a year.) Snakes will eat ANY TIME THEY CAN. They know that they need to store up fat during the summer, so that they’ll actually live during the winter. Snakes are still very wild. Sometimes, once they get older, some snakes will fast. BUT you shouldn’t decide for you snake when it will and will not eat. Other than regular feeding times, of course. If you have an adult snake who is of good weight, and it decides to fast, try again each month until it starts to eat again.
The reccomended feeding times for ALL captive pet snakes (well, most snakes, other than Colubrids [rat, garter, milk, corn, etc] who digest more quickly, and must eat more often) is as follows:
Babies: 1 food item per 7-10 days
Adults: 1 food item per 2-3 weeks
This is to have a healthy snake. If you want a sickly, ravenous, and perhaps aggressive snake, feed it 2-3 times a year.
When you feed a python, keep an eye on it for a few days. It’ll usually lounge around its heat source for 2-7 days (depending on the size and type of snake) and then begin roaming the cage a LOT. Guess what it’s doing. Hunting. At least with Ball Pythons, they prefer to hide, and will only come out when it’s hungry. If it starts getting lazy again, that can mean it’s beginning to try to conserve energy, waiting for food to come back.
Off my feeding rambling, heh.
Another thing about snake digestion process. For a snake that eats once a week, it’ll typically only poop once every 2-3 weeks. And it’s amazing how little is left once the smake gets done with it. It’s amazing how efficient a snake’s body is. Digests most of a mouse, and in order to conserve water, it passes balls of a chalky white substance called uric acid, accompanied by only a small amount of moisture.
Ahem, back to the OP.
leighton1978- What kind of python does your friend have? Does he feed it live or dead (dead is MUCH safer for a pet snake).
If it’s a Ball Python, feel free to let him know I’ll answer any questions, hehe.
Ahem. The shop teacher’s son who keeps rattlers, not the science teacher.
Oh. And add in all theat stuff other people said about wasting less due to the lack of generating it’s own body heat.
I THINK that mammals use 80% (is that number correct) of the energy it gets from food in generating body heat. That’s a lot bigger food requirement.
Dunno how I forgot to put that in.
Oh, and thanks for the link about the Big-Ass Retic.
I suppose that now puts Colossus to shame (longest in capitivty [until now] at 28.5’).
New Snake is VERY impressive.
Given that a 24’ Retic can eat a 100lb pig, that new one must eat HUGE dogs. Well . . . if he was, then I suppose it’d eat less often. It should be eating things like deer and hogs, hehe.
I’ve gotta second AnimistDragon in that I can’t think of many commonly kept pythons, other than Children’s (or other antarisa) pythons in the pet trade that eat only a single mouse at a feeding. Even my adult corns are easily capable of eating smallish rats. So is my rainbow boa, and he’s a little guy.
Is it a hatchling? Or something besides a Royal?
Also, I’d be very skeptical of their claim of 49+ feet on that Retic, considering that the largest snake seen to date was, what, 33 feet?
MixieArmadillo - Aww, you have a rainbow? Is it a Brazilian? They’re beautiful. What’s its temperment like?
Well, 49ft is possible, I soppose. There have been accounts of Anacondas getting that long, but Anacondas don’t generally grow to be as long as Retics. So, it’s possible that after all this time, someone finally found a huuuuge snake. I wonder how old it is.
And I wouldn’t want to be the one to measure it, heh. I have a hard enough time trying to measure my little Royals. (Royals and Ball Pythons are the same snake, in case anyone was getting confused). I hope they have a computer programs for it, heh.
PS: To all who may not know, Reticulated Pythons are considered to be the longest snake on the planet, not the Anaconda. Anacondas end up being heavier and having a bigger diameter, thus getting the name of the “largest” snake, not longest.
There’ some trivia for y’all.
AnimistDragon–He’s friggen’ georgeous! Under good lighting, his opalescence is stunning. He can be testy, but not like, say, an Emerald or something. When I picked him out, I knew I wanted a male as they stay a bit smaller than the females. Plus, I had a good name picked out for a male BRB ;).
Anyway, they sexed every single BRB in the clutch, and he was the only definite male there. I opened the deli cup lid, and he looked at me, considered the situation, and latched on to my thumb. I was like “aww, look at the cute widdle testy snake!” He was tiny. He’s eaten frozen/thawed since I got him as a hatchling, never even seen a live rodent as far as I know, and still he’s violent about feeding. I’m really careful about how I hold the mouse or rat to offer it to him. “Voracious feeder” barely describes.
He’s certainly not ill-tempered, and if he bites it’s not really a big deal or anything, but I am a bit more careful handling him not to move too quickly picking him up, than I am with the corns. I’ve only been bitten by him twice, once at the herp store and once while feeding, so it’s not as though he takes swipes at me all the time for no reason. As long as I don’t startle him when I go to pick him up, he’s absolutely fine. If I do startle him, I just hold still for a second and let him check out my hand, then he’s fine.
Re: measuring snakes, the best two methods I’ve heard is to get a clear piece of pipe from the hardware store, and tempt them into it, or take a piece of string and run it down their back, then measure the string.
I’d love to have an axanthic or high-contrast albino ball python. Maybe when I win the lottery 
MixieArmadillo - Wow, I think we’ve killed this thread. Oh well!
All I have right now are BPs. Had a pair of cornsnakes, but I didn’t realize just how very, very good colubrids were at getting out of cages that are very much secure enough for a BP. But the little male was rowdy like you’re talking about, heh. Struck at my finger a few times. Awwww. Smaller than my pinkie finger, and trying to be all badass, lol.
I’ve gotten one good (aka not hatchling) bite. From a 4.5’ male. He’s a super friendly snake, but I picked him up without petting him first. This was about a week after I adopted him. BAM. Got bitten in the FACE. He got my upper lip, inside an out. Could see both rows of teeth on my upper lip. It was so cool looking, heh. Snake bite hurt a surpisingly little amount. I thought he’d closed mouth me (felt more like a punch than being bitten) until I realized I was dripping blood onto the floor. It’s amazing how quickly they strike. My roomie says, “I’m not afraid of anything with legs, but your snakes move too fast for me to dodge.”
There’s a computer programs that measures snakes for you. You take a picture of them coiled loosely, with a reference thing beside it that can be measured (like a lighter or coin), and then it makes a line the length of the reference thing, and you overlay the line down the snake’s back. Yeeeah.
I’m buying my first morph this year (a male Pastel - Graziani line). I’m slowly starting up my own snake breeding business. Keep in contact with me, and maybe I’ll give you a discount sometime, heh. I plan on getting Axanthic, Melanistic (if they ever go on sale), maybe Lavander Albinos, maybe Pie Balds. We’ll see when I get there. Gonna be a few years.