Second most popular pet reptile in the world, the snake ball python also known as ball python, It is always seen as a solitary animal, both by its owners and by experts.
By not considering them social, people “tend to keep them alone or isolated,” Morgan Skinner, a researcher at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, told The New York Times.
To many people’s surprise (and pythons’ delight), however, in a study recently published in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, Skinner and his colleagues showed that these pythons (Python regius) are much more gregarious than previously thought.
The idea for the research arose when Skinner, then a doctoral candidate at Laurier, worked in the laboratory of Noam Miller, co-author of the article and an enthusiast studying the social behavior of snakes.
As Miller talked about recent studies of garter snakes and rattlesnakes, which have live young and huddle together during the winter, Skinner began to wonder how the supposedly non-social snakes interacted with each other.
As they are oviparous and therefore they do not give birth to already formed offspring nor do they hibernate in winter, ball pythons were chosen as ideal candidates for a study.
How was the study carried out to test the sociability of pythons?

The study to investigate whether ball pythons can have mates and form (literally) bonds with each other began in March 2020, when Skinner and his colleague Tamara Kumpan placed six pythons in a large space for ten days.
Consisting of males and females, the population was divided into individual plastic shelters. Soon, the team was surprised when The snakes quickly gathered together in a single shelter, spending 60% of their time together .
To eliminate the hypothesis that the shelter had any attractive features for the entire population, the researchers removed it. But, after a brief confusion, the snakes chose another “nest” to curl up in.
Carried out for another four years, the experiment repeated the pattern, even with the change of pythons. Five different groups of young specimens were tested with the same routine.
Skinner always disturbed them, sometimes separating them, placing them in the middle of the confinement space or taking some pythons from the common shelter and placing them in another. But they always came back together.
Even when they went out to explore their surroundings, the pythons meandered together. The males were more frequent in their wave-like tours than the females, but they always returned.
Importance of evaluating the social behavior of ball pythons

Although the behavior of P. regius Although it surprised Skinner (“I didn’t expect that from a snake that I didn’t think was social,” he said), Miller highlights that all the species he has studied “are very social.”
However, the experimental psychologist states that pythons proved to be much more social than garter snakes, considered clichés, as they soon formed clear companions to spend time together.
The young ball pythons didn’t even want to know who they were messing with. “They just wanted to be together all the time in a shelter,” concluded Skinner.
Praising the experiment, Vladimir Dinets, a specialist in social behavior of reptiles at the University of Tennessee, who was not involved in the study, told the NY Times that animal behavior in captivity is always different from natural behavior.
But even while acknowledging that pythons’ sociability is a consequence of captivity, the team argues that because these reptiles eat substantial meals, they can leave their communal dens and return when sated.
In this way, warns Skinner, ball pythons raised as pets may be being deprived of important social interactions something that could be significant for their natural behavior. “They like doing this,” he says.
“And they prefer to be social when they have the option,” adds Miller.
This content was originally published in Raised alone in captivity, ball pythons are very social; understand on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil

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