Hey guys Looong time no see. Just thought I’d pop in here because Leo has been acting reeeally weird the past month. He has been strongly and consistently in food mode for the past month despite having been fed. He tried to eat the cat bed he was sitting on like 15 minutes ago. He’s 7 years old.
He eats once a month. Last feed was xmas. He’s the only snake I have that’s acting this way. I’ll send the video i took. He eats rats, quail, chicken, gunea pigs, and salmon meat as an occasional treat. All of my other snakes are on a similar-ish diet. My big worry is that there was somehow some kind of parasite in the salmon. But I’m hoping that this could be something hormonal that I’m not accustomed to because this is the first time I’ve had a boa around this age. Or, even, it could be due to the change of scenery and the new cats.
We just moved to a new place and there are cats here. One momma, three kittens. They come out and play around the enclosures every now and then. (They’ve done a number on my rubber mat.) He’s been around cats before, and he hasn’t had this kind of reaction to them before, but cats havent shared his space to this same capacity before and he has never seen kittens before. So I’m not totally ruling that out.
The past month, he’s been waiting at the front of the enclosure whenever I see him. He food struck me pretty good 3 weeks ago, and the week after that, he tried pushing his face into my arm while I was spot cleaning his enclosure with him in it. Which, usually, isn’t an issue with him, or any of my boys. (Except maybe nugget.) Today tho, I went in with a hook and was very certain to indicate to him this was NOT food time, and he hasn’t tried to bite or push his face into me yet. He’s still out running around as i write this. He just started going into shed but doesn’t seem too inclined to hide, which is also a bit abnormal.
Has anyone experienced anything like this with their young adult boas? I’ll probably take him to the vet and hold off on any more treats regardless. But I want to know if this is something anyone else has experienced first before spending however many hundreds of dollars just in case. Thanks in advance!
Heres a video. Excuse my language. It’s how I normally talk.
As an owner of a 16 year old 7ft-ish 25lb Boa here is what I have to say…
Please, please, please do not let your reptiles hang around other animals in your house, let alone freely. For this very reason and a few others, if your snake has a strong feed response its the best to keep him away from any other animals… Depending on his size (knowing he’s 7 he should be up there) he could have easily killed that cat if he decided to constrict it, and trust me you wouldn’t be able to stop him quickly enough if he really wanted to. Boas are among the strongest of all snake species…
With this varied of a diet he may not exclude your fuzzy pets either.
Not to mention cats and dogs may carry diseases or bacteria that could be extremely harmful to reptiles that we wouldn’t ever be affected by. And if the cat for whatever reason got spooked it could seriously hurt or kill your snake through biting or scratching.
Raw unprepared/uncooked fish definitely has a risk of carrying parasites, I don’t imagine your feeding him cooked salmon either. I’d personally not take that risk for my snakes outside of my Ribbon snakes that mainly eat aquatics (f/t tilapia, silversides & occasional live guppies).
Definitely get him checked out by a vet just in case there might be something going on here… but behavioral changes and increased feeding response is not unheard of in Boas.
Okay, just because it has come up a lot in your statement, i want to be very clear: he shares a space with 3 kittens and their mother. As in they both use the space. But he does not, and has never, been allowed to hang out with the cats. They are not my cats. Their owner contains them when I am with my snakes. But, they are still around him regardless. His enclosure is very near to the floor. When he is locked up, they are out in front of his space, and I know he can both see them and smell them during that time. Which is why I think he may still be affected by their presence. I hope that clears it up.
I’m not experienced with boas but I also wanted to toss this out there…
Are you sure Leo is a male? Boas do tend to take some time to mature so a late bloomer that was kept on the slimmer side could be going into a hormonal cycle…
I don’t know if male boas are also prone to getting overly hormonal. It can happen with some pythons and they can have some major ‘hissy fits’.
Actually, that’s a great question! I’m not sure. I bought Leo as a female and his first name was actually Cleopatra. I’ve tried to get him probed multiple times, but everyone who has tried has had difficulty and can’t say for sure. We have decided male because he’s the size of a male. But his first owner did hardly feed him for the first 3 years of his life. Called it slow-growing. He very well could actually be a she, I just thought I had been ripped off.
Another great reason for a an experienced vet visit……
Edit to add:
From your op regarding the cats, it sounded to me as well that your boa was indeed sharing space with the cats with no division between them so I can see how @cmsreptiles Christina misread your post because I was confused as well……
Please make sure the noodles and the furries cannot come into contact with each other, even supervised, no matter how much you believe they “get along”. It just takes one accident of a noodle being a noodle (and a furry being a furry) to leave another black eye on the hobby that may lead to more legislation that USARK will have to fight. That’s good advice for all of us, not just the OP.
That’s super weird! Only thing even remotely similar I’ve experienced was when my blood python tried to eat the absorbent liner (like a puppy pad) I had under her substrate in her enclosure. She latched onto it with her mouth, was constricting it, and even started to try to swallow it, which was when I intervened. It happened a few days after I’d fed her, and the only explanation I could come up with was that maybe her rat had come into contact with the liner, maybe leaked some water or body fluids onto it, and that made the liner smell enough like food that it triggered her food response.
It is possible that the smell of the cats is triggering a food response from him. My snakes do sometimes look at my cat outside their enclosure with hungry eyes. He might be getting amped up from smelling them. Unless it’s some sort of hormonal thing, that’s my best guess, but it’s just a guess.
Ps: I didn’t think you were letting Leo hang out with the kitties from your post, for what it’s worth. But that could just be because I know you have better sense than that.
