Apologies for the bizzare question, but this is now the second year in a row that I’ve noticed this, and can’t find any information on it.
Last year while my female pied was building, I found she had smeared this mucus-y secretion around her tub, and it had this gross sickly sweet smell, almost like overripe fruit or when you step on one of those small centipedes. I washed out her entire tub, replaced the substrate, cleaned the hide, etc and the scent still kind of lingered.
Now both my female clown and spotnose are doing it while hanging out on the cool side, eating like hungry, hungry hippos, the usual. The smearing also coincided with the male I have in that room going off food.
What is this? Musk? Pheromones? It’s gross
Bob on Green Room Pythons mentioned that when his breeding age females are in the right season and can smell a male they “Scent” the area with pheremone and urine, and wag their tail a certain way, as a signal to the male that they are receptive to breeding with him.
So my guess is Yup, that might be the rare perfume “Eau de Femme Python regius”.
Possibly confirmed by him ceasing to eat because he doesn’t want FOOD he wants LADIES!
Edit: If I could find which of his videos he talks about that in, I’d link you. It’s a youtube Channel and he talks a lot about pythons, mainly Balls but some other kinds he has too.
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I’ve had a few of my females do the same when I introduced a male to their tub, so I definitely think it’s some sort of breeding behavior!
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