Had a… busy (??dangerous??) weekend. Came home with a bundle of strange.
1.3 Scaphiophis albopunctatus
These things are all kinds of weird. Imagine the illegitimate offspring from a drunken one-night stand between a Pituophis, a Leioheterodon, and a Rhamphiophis and you kind of get the idea
Ooh, I love the yellow.
They look like a some of the toy snakes made for kids. You know the kind, the ones that don’t actually look like anything real? Yellow bellies, dorsal speckles, generally intense looking. Nice!!
Hi, how are these doing for you? Can you explain how you’re keeping them?
Short answer… Poorly
This species does not acclimate well and they ended up being quite intolerant to the anti-parasitics my vet and I elected to try on them (no info out there so it was pure trial and error).
I may try them again, depends on the ongoing reorganization of snake rooms and what I may have available for Q space. If I do, I will focus more on getting them hydrated and stabilized first, then work on getting them feeding, and only after that has happened will I look at flushing them out internally
Oof, I’m sorry to hear that. What medication did you use?
Combination pyrantel and praziquantel. I think fenbendazole might be a better choice than pyrantel for tolerance
There’s precious little about these guys on Wikipedia. Perhaps you could tell us a little about them? Other than “they’re beautiful “. I got that much… please?
Like @t_h_wyman I’ve kept Scaphiophis as well, but also with not much success. The female I’ve had successfully acclimated just passed this fall due to old age, she slowed down immensely after developing cataracts and had difficulty eating because her feeding response was so reliant on visual cues. I now do not have any more Scaphiophis and probably will not attempt them again for a long time.
If you have any specifics you’d like to know more about these snakes, let me know and I can answer to the best of my ability.
Thanks. I have nothing specific in mind. I have no interest in raising these snakes. I was just surprised at how little they do know about them. I know Wikipedia is typically a very shallow dive. I rarely need more than that, though.
How big do they get? What do they eat? Terrestrial or arboreal? Diurnal or nocturnal? Usual suspects…
No worries, and yeah the lack of information on them was part of the stress of keeping them lol.
For size, my biggest was a female who hit somewhere around 5’3" I’d want to say? I never got a precise measurement for her, but she was long enough I placed her in a 6’ x 2’ x 2’ enclosure and she could fully stretch out in it. She was around 800 g at her healthiest, but she lost some of the weight after she too developed cataracts. I believe she was fairly old by the time I got her, just from observing how large and scarred up she was, how her movement was like, and how fast she developed cataracts.
From the few papers I’ve read, and from what mine would take, they seem to be primarily rodent eaters. In captivity mine would take f/t mice, rats, gerbils, and hamsters. They outright refused anything else and didn’t seem to register them as potential prey. Maybe people have gotten them to successfully take other prey, but that was not my experience.
They’re mainly terrestrial snakes, and excellent burrowers. The nose of theirs really helps! And based from what I’ve seen of their skulls, they have what appears to be fused bony plates (I do not know the anatomical term for these, sorry) forming their “beak” and the top of their heads. I have given mine some climbing opportunities, but they rarely utilized them. They did seem to like hiding under the fake plants I’d drape over the branches though for a more shaded/dappled hiding spot effect, especially after they ate. Mine seemed to be more active during the day, so I’d say they are diurnal. I’d rarely catch them being active in the evening or night, once the lights were out they’d go hide and I wouldn’t see them until the morning.
I guess medically wise, I’ve used febendazole, praziquantel, oxfendazole, metronidazole, and Natural Chemistry’s Reptile Relief on them. A few of mine had adverse reactions to metronidazole despite my vet and I using a lower concentration than what was formerly recommended to me (I’ve had to medicate Malpolon before, not fun). They got super lethargic, then showed neurological symptoms, and died rather quickly so for the other imports I got I skipped using metro all together. Many of my Scaphiophis came in rough shape so I was also struggling to get them rehydrated on top of heavy hookworm and coccidia infestations. Like @t_h_wyman and others I’ve spoken with, these snakes seem really affected by stress so it feels like a time race against the odds. I’ve had two also die from a really strange bacterial infection that managed to make its way into the snake’s central nervous system, but mostly in the brain. The strangest part to me was they were only in my care for 2 days, and for all appearances looked fine to me - nothing out of the ordinary. And unfortunately in my own and someone else’s experience, they’re also spunky enough to keep throwing threat displays until they reach a point of no return. If a Scaphiophis isn’t a little spicy (this even includes huffiness), then something is wrong with them.
I know someone who had a group doing relatively well last time I spoke to her. I wish her the best, this species isn’t easy to keep and I think she lucked out in the gamble of getting fairly healthy imports.
Excellent report! Thanks for taking the time. I would never have guessed almost six feet!
Super interesting information, thanks to @t_h_wyman and @ntam for sharing their experiences with this species. It’s a shame that they don’t seem to acclimate well to captivity, because they’re really beautiful. Maybe someday someone will manage to breed them in captivity, and then perhaps CBB babies would do better.
I hope one day we’ll be able to see CBB babies, but I think I’ll probably not get back into them even if does happen. That being said, I’m more than willing to freely share my notes and experiences with anyone interested because I believe this kind of information goes a long way into helping animals getting a foothold in captivity. The person I mentioned with the healthy group, @t_h_wyman , and another acquaintance were all very open in discussing their own experiences too - I did have a Google doc up too for us to take notes in.
And I do hope in the future, the other color forms of Scaphiophis will establish themselves into captivity too. They naturally come in the grey-yellow, blue-grey, and grey-red forms, though given their current survival rate as imports I’d be less focused on the potential “morphs” and more so on keeping them alive lol.
Thanks fur jumping in @ntam, I felt better having you comment here given your greater experience with these
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For anyone interested, here is a link to a 3D scan of a Scaphiophis skull that you can rotate and zoom in on:
https://www.morphosource.org/concern/media/000076249?locale=en
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This is speculation on my part, but I suspect a significant contributing factor of the issue with getting these settled in is that they are pretty susceptible to dehydration. So the time between them being:
Once the animals have gone through all of that, they have already suffered some traumatic kidney injury.
The animals most likely to make it through all of that with the least issue are more likely to be the largest, oldest, most beat up looking animals that no one really wants. And even if someone does pick those animals up, because of their age they are more likely to be particular with their diet and so harder to get transitioned over to “domestic” feeders
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I hate saying this, and I do not say it lightly, but I think that perhaps the most likely road to success is to acquire a gravid female and hope that she does not suffer egg-binding from the stress of travel
This is a horribly brutal mentality and I absolutely believe that only a serious, educated, experienced, and dedicated individual even consider trying this given the gravid females are almost certainly going to die from the stress
And while I consider myself to be serious, educated, experienced, and dedicated with my work establishing other WC species, I can tell you explicitly that I will NOT be attempting Scaphs any time soon because I recognize there is more I need to get under my belt before I feel comfortable trying them again
Thanks @t_h_wyman for adding in your experience and thoughts as well!
And you aren’t wrong. The three who survived the longest in my care were indeed the largest, oldest, most beat up looking animals. Same experience with my other acquaintance. I had an old male who was in such rough shape I didn’t expect him to last more than a year (he didn’t).
All three of these old Scaphs absolutely would not take domestic mice or rats during quarantine either - I had to resort to f/t hamsters and gerbils to get them started. In my state, I cannot use ASFs since they are illegal, but I bet they would have taken those quickly.
Then it’s the delicate balance between feeding them and not spooking them badly because all three old timers would NOT take drop-fed or overnight f/t prey (and I didn’t want to risk live). The bonus with them being older is that they weren’t nearly as nervous or flighty as the younger Scaphs, so they learned fairly fast to take prey off tongs if I did the “zombie dance” correctly. It was a hit or miss game with young Scaphs - some would take drop-fed rodents, others would not. But all required seeing at least some movement from their prey.
This behavior did not change in either quarantine (more sterile) or naturalistic set ups by the way. And I highly recommend NOT skipping the treatment step for them too, because as @t_h_wyman speculated with the stresses they accrue from capture to exportation, leaving them to the mercy of their internal parasites is going to guarantee a short lifespan for a Scaph.
And if they don’t eat medication-injected prey, then good luck administering oral medication. I’ve never had such difficulty doing so with any snake. They have incredibly strong neck muscles and their lower jaw slots so neatly into the upper jaw I had to use smooth plastic spoons to be able to open their mouths. Everything else was too thick, too straight/flat, but the spoon had just the right amount of curve to it to fit into their weird mouth shape.
