Do Snake Feel Sad?

 

Snakes display specific behaviour like aggression, fear etc. You can see this behaviour in every snake. These behaviours are part of their instinct

But do snakes get sad? No. snakes do not feel sad. Sadness is an emotion that involves the activation of various parts of the brain. These brain parts get triggered due to specific experiences that we are experiencing or has experienced. Unfortunately, those parts are not so developed in snakes. 

Reptiles Emotions

Reptiles like lizards, turtle, enjoy human touch and loves to get more of it. You can see them closing their eyes, enjoying it. Specific hormonal secretion happens when we touch them. 

Because of this, we can bond with these reptiles and snakes are no exception.

A pet reptile can often come to the owner to experience human touch. Reptiles are capable of experiencing anger, pain, fear. 

Unfortunately, scientists are not entirely sure whether reptiles can experience love, sadness, happiness. More research is conducted to find the right answers. 

Why A Snake Looks Sad Sometimes?

There are a lot of factors that influence a snake’s behaviour. Like if they don’t get proper food, they can become aggressive. 

If they have any disease or if they are physically weak due to poor diet, then a snake may behave like they are sad, but they are actually lazy and is probably feeling weak. 

That’s why the snake is not energetic like before. Give them proper food, and they will feel energized again.

Like most reptiles, snakes can also recognize someone who cares for them and acknowledge their touch. They are comfortable around people they interact daily, but the touch has to be gentle.

If too many people touch a snake at the snake time, it can become difficult for the snake to recognize who is who.

Snakes don’t have great eyesight. They see everything in infrared. Unfortunately, the difference between the infrared view of two people is not much, so a snake cannot identify based on that.

But even if only one person is touching them daily if they don’t get food and water properly, they will show aggression towards that person. 

If a person is feeding a snake regularly and one day he decides to stop. Now a new person replaces the older person, shows equal respect to the snake and provides food on time. Then the snake won’t have any problem accepting the new person.

*If your snake is sluggish and not interacting with anything, then consult an expert because some underlying problem could be causing this. 

How To Treat A Snake

If you are not hurting the snake by any means and not teasing the snake, then the snake will also be respectful to you. But if you do the opposite, they can attack you the moment you try to touch them.

It is a response to the threat. The snake considers you as a threat that’s why the snake is behaving aggressively.

As long as you fulfil the snake’s essential requirement, the snakes will behave normally.

The primary concern for the snake is their food and water. If you are giving food and water to the snake, then the snake will understand that. 

When you approach the snake, the snake will react appropriately. The snake will come out from it’s hiding spot if you have created one in the cage or will wake up if it was sleeping.

Behavioural Modification Of A Snake

It is possible to make behavioural modification through reward and punishment. 

In a word the snake’s primary requirement is food, so the snake is attached to the food, and if you are the one who is giving the food, then the snake will have a bond with you because of the food. 

By behavioural modification I mean you can make them do a specific task by giving the food as a reward. 

For example, if you want the snake to drink water before consuming food, then when the snake drinks water, you give extra food, but when your snake doesn’t drink water, you provide less food. 

If you do that repeatedly, the snake will understand that by drinking water, the snake will get much more food, and your snake will drink water every time to get more food. 

This was just an example you can use the reward and punishment tactics to bring positive changes in your snake if that is required.

How To Make A Connection With Your Snake?

When you feed a snake daily, it creates a bonding. If one day you decide to attack that snake, then that snake will immediately get aggressive and will try to defend itself by attacking you. 

It is their instinct to protect themselves wherever they feel threatened.

The best way to make a connection with the snake is to provide them with food. Don’t put your hand at first carefully give the food to the snake. 

Eventually, the snake will understand that you are not a threat, and then you can touch the snake.

Do Snakes Like To Travel?

If you are a person who likes to travel and you want to take your snake with you, then you need to take special measures. 

Snakes are curious creatures, and if you allow them to go with you to different places, it won’t be a problem, but you cannot let your snake roam freely because the snake will get lost.

If your snake has always remained in captivity, then it will not know the wild. Out of curiosity, it will try to explore the wild, and that can be problematic for the snake.

Pet snake doesn’t know about the outside world so it can easily get lost or predators can kill them.

If you want to take a snake with you while travelling, keep it in an enclosed cage that you can carry easily.

Another thing to keep in mind is every snake has different ability to cope up with different temperatures. 

For example, if your snake’s species is supposed to live in warm countries, taking them to cold countries and exposing them to the cold can be problematic for the snake. So keep that in mind.

You need to provide food and water consistently because if you do not provide food and water always, then the snake can get agitated. You don’t want that to happen while you are travelling. 

Do Snakes Have Personality?

Snakes can have a different personality that being said, all snakes have few things in common. Aggression, cautiousness, curiousness other than that the personality varies from species to species.

If you have many snakes in your house, then one of the snake will dominate other snakes, and its personality will be different from other snakes. 

Small snakes are scared of giant snakes, so if you are trying to keep them together; then they will fight. The small snake will behave differently from the giant snake,

For example, if you have a King Cobra, which is a very big and poisonous snake. And you decide to keep a small snake with it then it can get dangerous for the small snake.

King Cobra can devour the small snake. 

If you have a python in your house which is also a very aggressive snake and if you let a small snake go near the python, the python can attack the small snake and kill it. 

Even within the same species, snakes can have a different personality. For example, if you have pythons in your house, then one of the python can be more aggressive than the other one.

Male and female snakes have a different personality. So if you have one male snake and one female snake and they live in the same conditions, then you can easily differentiate their personality.  

While travelling, you have to keep their personality in mind and treat them properly, and you’ll be fine.

Can Snakes Run Away

If you keep your cage open, then snakes can get out of it. Primarily because of curiosity. Once out of the cage the snake can go to nearby places.

It can be challenging to find them once they are outside of the cage.

It’s also possible that snake can come back, but I am not counting on that so keep the cage closed and keep them properly. 

Bigger snake requires a bigger cage and a smaller snake requires a small cage. Please don’t put them together. If you put big snakes in a small cage, then they can break the cage. 

If a snake is satisfied with what they have, i.e. if they are getting consistent food, then the snake may not try to leave the place.

If you don’t keep the snake in a cage when the snake is young, then the snake will get habituated with that and will not go away.

But that can be risky depending upon the species of the snake.