Greatballzofire   Lampro   Greatballzofire  

 #1791978

 Rattlesnakes smell tasty!

An interesting factoid:
Four litters of king snakes (Lampropeltis getulus), a snake-eating species, were tested for responses to chemicals from colubrid and crotaline snakes. King snakes presented with swabs rubbed against the dorsal skin of living snakes and with swabs treated with methylene chloride extracts of shed snake skins tongue-flicked more to swabs from a northern copperhead (Agkistrodon contortrix), a crotaline, than to swabs from some colubrid snakes or to blank swabs. Six out of 10 king snakes in one litter attacked and attempted to ingest swabs treated with snake skin chemicals, implicating these chemicals as feeding stimuli for these ophiophagous snakes. Ingestively naive king snakes presented with plain air and snake odors in an olfactometer tongue-flicked more to snake odors. This study and others suggest that crotaline and colubrid snakes can be distinguished by chemical cues.
So if you have a young snake who is a difficult feeder, rub the pinkies with rattlesnake smell! Of course this entails keeping a rattlesnake...a dead frozen one preferably.

 #1792177

 Rattlesnakes smell tasty!

GboF- You seem to be somewhat the info fanatic I am, I got tired of reading abstracts and started getting full copies of the articles here.(most for $5/each)..........(warning bibliomania can be addicting!)
Link

 #1792196

 Rattlesnakes smell tasty!

Thanks, Lampro! That is a great link. I will be using it for sure.
Cooper, W. E., Jr., G. W. Ferguson. 1973. Induction of physiological color change in male Sceloporus occidentalis by epinephrine. Copeia. 1973(2) :341-342. This article is part of the complete issue of this journal
HaHa! Now I can make my fence lizards turn blue with the epinephrine I keep in stock to treat anaphylaxis when I am vaccinating animals (fortunately never had to use)
Just kidding.