# How smart are pythons



## Yellowtail (Feb 17, 2020)

How intelligent are carpet pythons?
Pea brained with hard wired instincts to feed and breed? I think they are very much smarter than that.
I have just removed a pesky carpet from one of my sheds where I breed rodents.
To gain entry it has to climb a tree to the shed roof, cross the roof to the front and climb down over the top of the roller door, it then slithers along the top of an internal partition wall about 15m to get to the one tiny gap between the ceiling and the partition that I have not patched up because it is impossible to get to without dismantling big shelf units.
Nothing remarkable about that, just instinctive behaviour except this is the 4th time over 3 months I have removed this one snake that is easily identified by a distinctive scar on it's body.
Each time I have relocated it approx 1 km down the road past 2 other houses, a lot of bush and a couple of small valleys with creeks to the vicinity of a friends house where there are lots of buildings with wild rats and mice for it to feed on. 
Over the last 2 weeks we have had 300mm of rain which has changed the environment a lot and you would think washed away any scent trail.
It is only a bit over a metre long and seems very well fed for a wild python (not on my rodents) Each time it seems resigned to being removed and does not put up much of a fight.


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## nuttylizardguy (Feb 17, 2020)

I think predatory reptiles have more smarts than most give them credit for , this comes from their needing to work out how to catch the prey , or even find it comes with a need for more brain power than is required to munch on green stuff.


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## Sdaji (Feb 18, 2020)

It's popular to say they're smart and unpopular to say they're stupid, but they're really not that smart. Extremely simple animals can carry out tasks complex enough to surprise most people. Instinct is often mislabelled as intelligence. Snakes are unusual in the animal world in that they're predators which are often less intelligent than their prey.

Of course, on a site dedicated to people who love snakes, the crowd will always be biased towards saying they're highly intelligent, with cliches like 'they're smarter than most people think' being guaranteed to come up in any such discussion, common enough to be paradoxical. It's remarkable what animals with low intelligence can achieve, and sure, they're more intelligent than a frog, rock or Australian Prime Minister, but something like a Carpet Python is easily outbrained by something like a mouse.

Abilities like navigation are highly instinctive in snakes, without the necessity for intelligence. It's easy for animals like humans to mistake this ability for intelligence because we don't have that innate ability in the same way. To put it in a way humans would understand, consider that our facial recognition ability is astounding. We can see faces for a very short period of time and almost instantly record them, able to recognise them years later, even distinguishing them from extremely similar faces. The innate processing ability required to achieve this task is phenomenal, but it does not require intelligence, which can be demonstrated by even extremely stupid people being just as capable of carrying out this task as intelligent people. Computers with no intelligence can do this, it is a task which can be carried out on instinct. 

Intelligence is the ability to cognitively process information, make sense of it, come up with ideas, solve problems. Snakes are almost entirely lacking in this capacity. You will never see a Carpet Python faced with a task stop, think and then come up with a plan of action based on the idea it just came up with. Yes, they have excellent navigational capability for such a simple creature, but this is not a form of intelligence - even life forms literally lacking brains or even nervous systems and thus entirely without any form of actual intelligence can have the ability to navigate. Carpet Pythons have the ability to see in infrared, but again, while this is a remarkable ability, it isn't intelligence.

But, of course, the popular opinion among an enthusiast community is not going to be the correct one based on evidence, it will be the one which people want to be the case.


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## nick_75 (Feb 18, 2020)

I agree with Sdaji, with no disrespect to animals that I find fascinating. They don't need intelligence to survive when their basic instincts cover all facets.

A good indication of intelligence is looking at whether an animal lives in complex society groups. Animals that live in a society are generally of a higher intelligence than animals that do not.


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## nuttylizardguy (Feb 18, 2020)

Just a few interesting reads on reptile intelligence :

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...e-just-giving-them-the-wrong-tests-180947769/

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/19/science/coldblooded-does-not-mean-stupid.html

http://www.reptilesmagazine.com/Six-Studies-On-Reptile-Intelligence/

http://jonlieffmd.com/blog/lizards-arent-supposed-to-be-this-smart
*



Brain Theories

Click to expand...





Very recently, it was found that both birds and reptiles have unique centers in the brain housing neurons that appear to be similar to those in the mammals neocortex.

Click to expand...

*


> The neocortex has been assumed to be unique in the higher order mammals with six distinct cortical layers of advanced neurons.


Jennifer Dugas-Ford, Joanna J. Rowell, and Clifton W. Ragsdale. *Cell-type homologies and the origins of the neocortex*. _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_, 2012; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1204773109

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140930090443.htm
Anna Kis, Ludwig Huber, Anna Wilkinson. *Social learning by imitation in a reptile (Pogona vitticeps)*. _Animal Cognition_, 2014; DOI: 10.1007/s10071-014-0803-7

A bit more going inside their brains than just reaction to stimulous or hardwired instinctive stuff.


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## Sdaji (Feb 18, 2020)

nuttylizardguy said:


> Just a few interesting reads on reptile intelligence :
> 
> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...e-just-giving-them-the-wrong-tests-180947769/
> 
> ...



You know you're clutching at straws when you reference a reptile magazine and the New York Times for something like this!

The one source with some credibility you've referenced, the Smithsonian, merely said that a tortoise was able to navigate (again, this is a task single-celled life forms like slime moulds can achieve!) and that a type of lizard was able to adopt a different feeding style to suit a changed situation (again, single-celled life forms can do this, it does not require intelligence).

You will be able to detect rudimentary forms of intelligence in reptiles, and in a few cases a little more than rudimentary, especially noting that things like goannas and tortoises are far more intelligent than something like a Carpet Python, but even if you desperately clutch at any excuse to call them intelligent, something like a Carpet Python is still far less intelligent than virtually if not literally all mammals and birds.

Where do you draw the line? Invertebrate people have the same syndrome as herpers, talking about the amazing level of intelligence insects and other arthropods have. At some point you need to acknowledge that in reality, a clear hierarchy of intelligence does exist in the animal world, and among terrestrial vertebrates, a Carpet Python isn't anywhere near the top.


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## nuttylizardguy (Feb 18, 2020)

Sdaji said:


> You know you're clutching at straws when you reference a reptile magazine and the New York Times for something like this!
> 
> The one source with some credibility you've referenced, the Smithsonian, merely said that a tortoise was able to navigate (again, this is a task single-celled life forms like slime moulds can achieve!) and that a type of lizard was able to adopt a different feeding style to suit a changed situation (again, single-celled life forms can do this, it does not require intelligence).
> 
> ...


I simply presented the links.
NYTimes was only of the references . Would you prefer if the source was Fox News ?

Others are all peer reviewed scientific papers.


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## Yellowtail (Feb 18, 2020)

In my original post I was merely pointing out how we underestimate their abilities.
To navigate back almost a kilometre 4 times, the last after storms and flooding is an amazing but instinctive feat.
To remember the complex way to enter the shed is not just instinct it shows memory and ability to learn and repeat a difficult task.
It would be difficult to train a more intelligent species like a dog, monkey, parrot, dolphin etc to perform such a complex task and this snake was not trained but acted purely on it's own initiative to seek out food.


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## Sdaji (Feb 18, 2020)

Yellowtail said:


> In my original post I was merely pointing out how we underestimate their abilities.
> To navigate back almost a kilometre 4 times, the last after storms and flooding is an amazing but instinctive feat.
> To remember the complex way to enter the shed is not just instinct it shows memory and ability to learn and repeat a difficult task.
> It would be difficult to train a more intelligent species like a dog, monkey, parrot, dolphin etc to perform such a complex task and this snake was not trained but acted purely on it's own initiative to seek out food.



As I said above, extremely simple creatures and even lifeforms which aren't creatures can 'learn' to repeat difficult tasks like navigation. Even single-celled life forms can do it. Indeed, it's a remarkable feat and it's worthy of discussion, but it's not intelligence, and if we're going to have the discussion it makes sense to address your initial question, which was, quote: "How intelligent are carpet pythons?"

Navigation ability, amazing as it is, isn't strongly correlated with intelligence. Highly intelligent animals (you've given some examples) are often not as good at navigating as some clearly less intelligent animals. Mice are not especially intelligent animals by mammal standards, but they're extremely good at navigation and remarkably easily trained to remember extremely complex navigational tasks. Your Carpet Python is a good demonstration of an animal of low intelligence displaying a strong ability to remember and navigate to a known location. It's a very common ability among animals, intelligent and not so intelligent. An ability is different from intelligence. Another ability, say, hearing, can be as good or better in a stupid person than in an intelligent person.
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nuttylizardguy said:


> I simply presented the links.
> NYTimes was only of the references . Would you prefer if the source was Fox News ?



Believe it or not, I don't think politically-biased propaganda sites are good for science reference, regardless of which direction their irrational bias lies.



> Others are all peer reviewed scientific papers.



I specifically referred to your first three references. You say all the rest are peer reviewed scientific papers. Check the very next one in your list (hint: it's just some grey literature blog).

Looking at the last two which actually are, a critical reader may find them interesting, but will understand that they actually indicate how low in intelligence these animals are. While many other animals continually demonstrate signs of noteworthy intelligence, only one of the two articles actually shows a display of intelligence in a reptile, and they're getting excited because they actually managed to identify one. The fact that they're excited about actually managing to do so is due to signs of intelligence being so limited. It is very easy to find far more examples of far greater intelligence in other animals. This type of article about a bird or mammal would be completely redundant.


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## Yellowtail (Feb 18, 2020)

I relocated it 800m in the opposite direction on the other side of a deep valley so we will see if it's back in a week or so.


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## Sdaji (Feb 18, 2020)

Yellowtail said:


> I relocated it 800m in the opposite direction on the other side of a deep valley so we will see if it's back in a week or so.



Sounds likely. Relocated snakes usually die but this one seems pretty good at finding its way back.


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## Licespray (Feb 19, 2020)

Sdaji said:


> Relocated snakes usually die



Proof of this statement?


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## Yellowtail (Feb 19, 2020)

Sdaji said:


> Sounds likely. Relocated snakes usually die but this one seems pretty good at finding its way back.


I'm interested in your reasoning for this statement.
My property and most of the surrounding area is rugged, undeveloped, mostly rainforest and crossed by numerous creeks. The human residents I have met are comfortable with having pythons relocated to their properties so I am not putting them in harms way. I do not relocate elapids, just move them away from aviaries etc and I prefer not to relocate the carpets but the area is crawling with them and I only move problem ones that seriously come after my rodents and birds.


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## Sdaji (Feb 19, 2020)

Before I was a qualified ecologist I said I was sure it would be the case, after studying biology at university I was equally sure (and herpers hated me for saying it) and I wasn't surprised more recently when formal real world studies demonstrated it. The raw data speaks for itself as a demonstration of reality, and the explanation I would give is the same one I'd have given as an uneducated teenager.

Habitats can only support a certain number of animals. Any viable population produces more offspring than can survive (if this is not the case over the long term it goes extinct). If you add a new animal to that existing system, you have overloaded it, typically meaning either an existing animal will die, or the new animal will die. Since the new animal doesn't have an established territory etc etc, it is more likely to be the one which dies. Sometimes, the new animal is either particularly strong or lucky and it displaces an existing animal (which is generally worse than the new animal being the one which dies, although if the relocation wasn't over a large distance and didn't contaminate with any new parasites etc it is of little difference). The alternative is that adult animals are more likely to survive and so you have overloaded the population with adults causing an unhealthy imbalance (this is rare and of little consequence if it's just one individual, but in that rare cases you are still causing harm rather than good).

Generally the animal you cause to die if the introduced animal lives will be a juvenile which is excluded from critical resources thus dies.

Simply put, understand that a habitat is only going to support a certain population of a species (adding new individuals isn't going to increase the stable population, right?). This clearly means the addition of an animal means the be back in balance, an animal must die, right? Most likely it will be thr newcomer rather than a resident.

Obviously you can come up with hypotheticals deliberately manufactured to be exceptions, and no, I'm not suggesting that you are causing an entire environmental catastrophe by relocating one snake, but you're typically doing one snake's worth of harm rather than any good.


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## Shikito123 (Feb 19, 2020)

Sdaji, I find your knowledge very interesting and makes sense if you think about it too. Snakes and most reptiles have evolved for their particular niche. all a python needs to do is find food and reproduce. If your house, Yellowtail, is abundant of food, then what's the reason for that snake not to keep coming back? If its easy food then they're going to keep going there. 

Sdaji, are taipans different? I have heard many things about them showing signs of remembering routines and the such. If they are more "intelligent" would that be due to an evolutionary trait such as prey is harder to find ect?


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## Bl69aze (Feb 19, 2020)

Shikito123 said:


> Sdaji, I find your knowledge very interesting and makes sense if you think about it too. Snakes and most reptiles have evolved for their particular niche. all a python needs to do is find food and reproduce. If your house, Yellowtail, is abundant of food, then what's the reason for that snake not to keep coming back? If its easy food then they're going to keep going there.
> 
> Sdaji, are taipans different? I have heard many things about them showing signs of remembering routines and the such. If they are more "intelligent" would that be due to an evolutionary trait such as prey is harder to find ect?


Cobras aswell are extremely intelligent, especially king cobras


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## nuttylizardguy (Feb 19, 2020)

Licespray said:


> Proof of this statement?


Yeh … where's the proof for that ?

I mean supported with hard facts .
Show the data .


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## Sdaji (Feb 19, 2020)

Shikito123 said:


> Sdaji, I find your knowledge very interesting and makes sense if you think about it too. Snakes and most reptiles have evolved for their particular niche. all a python needs to do is find food and reproduce. If your house, Yellowtail, is abundant of food, then what's the reason for that snake not to keep coming back? If its easy food then they're going to keep going there.
> 
> Sdaji, are taipans different? I have heard many things about them showing signs of remembering routines and the such. If they are more "intelligent" would that be due to an evolutionary trait such as prey is harder to find ect?



Taipans aren't going to win any chess tournaments or start building cars and shopping centres but they're certainly a lot smarter than a Carpet Python. Taipans and Mambas are among the smartest of snakes. Not all that smart, but they're geniuses among snakes. Totally, evolution is going to favour higher intelligence when it is a benefit, and.not when it's not. Whether you're a bacterium or a human or anything else, you've had the exact same amount of time to evolve. Having a large, complex brain is a handicap (it's large, heavy, fragile/vulnerable and requires a lot resources to produce and maintain). Additionally, intelligence is slower to implement than instinct, and if your strategies are consistent, you're actually going to act and react faster and more efficiently if you're less.intelligent. If you're a Taipan actively venturing into bandicoot burrows your job is difficult and dangerous and requires more intelligence. If you're primarily a sit and wait ambush guy like a Carpet Python, you'll do better with basic instincts and less intelligence than a Taipan.
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nuttylizardguy said:


> Yeh … where's the proof for that ?
> 
> I mean supported with hard facts .
> Show the data .



Studies have been done on translocated snakes. I don't have the references handy but you're more than welcome to either play online and find them, or hey, if you want to disbelieve me despite how obvious it is when you think about it or because you're stubborn and lazy that's totally cool! 

Next time I come across them I'll try to remember this thread and put in links, but formal studies have been done, and seriously, it does make obvious, intuitive sense. It's exactly what you'd expect.


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## Yellowtail (Feb 20, 2020)

I used to think of carpet pythons as almost exclusively an ambush predator that also occasionally had an opportunistic feed but since I started living amongst them with more opportunity to observe their natural behaviour I have noticed they definitely do deliberately seek out and hunt prey like an elapid.
I watched one from my rear deck navigate almost a straight line from rainforest 50m across a cleared area then up a steep hill directly to a shed where I keep rodents, it then prowled around the shed trying to gain access.
They regularly climb trees to get on top of the snake proof mesh of my cocky aviaries and similarly cruise around looking for an entry point. One even worked out how to crawl down a down pipe from the house guttering and exit above a leaf strainer to get into a netted patio area where I have a bird cage. 
Another exhibited more traditional behaviour taking up an ambush position in the roof gutter adjacent a branch of a grevillia tree and was successful in constricting a king parrot too large for it to swallow. OK this was an ambush situation but it required intelligence to identify the only spot on a big roof that it could reach a feeding bird. I posted photos of this previously.


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## GBWhite (Feb 20, 2020)

Licespray said:


> Proof of this statement?





nuttylizardguy said:


> Yeh … where's the proof for that ?
> 
> I mean supported with hard facts .
> Show the data .



Been following this thread and thought I'd provide a couple of links to studies done on translocated snakes that I plucked out of my reference folder just in case you couldn't locate any online.

https://www.researchgate.net/public...kes_Notechis_scutatus_in_a_suburban_landscape

In this one 3 of 8 = 37.5% translocated snakes died


https://www.jstor.org/stable/1565542?seq=1

In this one 6 of 11 = 54.5% translocated snakes died


https://www.publish.csiro.au/wr/wr17166

In this one all 4 translocated snakes died = 100%


This one is interesting as all 9 introduced Womas died within a 4 month period as what is believed to have been a result of predation by Mulga Snakes.

https://www.researchgate.net/public...f_the_woma_python_in_northern_South_Australia

As far as "snake intelligence goes" I have to agree with Sdaji's posts in that the ability for snakes to navigate does not imply intelligence. In fact a study with translocated Burmese Pythons in Florida undertaken by researchers from the Biological Department of Davidson College in 2014 indicated they had the ability to navigate from their release site to within 5 klms of their original capture site (distances traveled between 21 & 36 klms). So obviously memory played no part in navigation.

Abstract taken from the research paper..."Navigational capacity allows an animal to determine when and where to move. Thus, the purpose of this study was to determine whether Burmese pythons have the navigational capacity to find their way home after being translocated miles away to an unfamiliar location. The ability to home after translocation involves both a map sense and a compass sense. A map sense allows for determination of position in relation to a goal, whereas a compass sense requires access to a reliable area to maintain orientation towards the goal. While many previously studied snakes have shown a lack of ability to home, the Burmese python is the first snake to demonstrate this skill".

What was revealed was that, as these Burmese Pythons determined and maintained the bearings toward their capture site they have navigational compass senses. The researchers go on to say, " Potential environmental cues underlying the map sense in pythons include olfactory and magnetic cues, while the compass sense may involve magnetic, celestial, olfactory, or polarized light cues. However, further research must be done to determine the underlying sensory systems involved".


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## Nero Egernia (Feb 20, 2020)

A species doesn't need to be intelligent to successfully survive on earth. Look at the humble starfish, for example. They don't have a brain as we recognize it, and here they are with fossil records that date back several hundred million years ago.


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## Sdaji (Feb 20, 2020)

Yellowtail said:


> I used to think of carpet pythons as almost exclusively an ambush predator that also occasionally had an opportunistic feed but since I started living amongst them with more opportunity to observe their natural behaviour I have noticed they definitely do deliberately seek out and hunt prey like an elapid.
> I watched one from my rear deck navigate almost a straight line from rainforest 50m across a cleared area then up a steep hill directly to a shed where I keep rodents, it then prowled around the shed trying to gain access.
> They regularly climb trees to get on top of the snake proof mesh of my cocky aviaries and similarly cruise around looking for an entry point. One even worked out how to crawl down a down pipe from the house guttering and exit above a leaf strainer to get into a netted patio area where I have a bird cage.
> Another exhibited more traditional behaviour taking up an ambush position in the roof gutter adjacent a branch of a grevillia tree and was successful in constricting a king parrot too large for it to swallow. OK this was an ambush situation but it required intelligence to identify the only spot on a big roof that it could reach a feeding bird. I posted photos of this previously.



Interesting anecdotes, although I question your interpretation of what you're seeing. Without doubt they do explore, and no doubt if they encounter something worth eating they'll often take the opportunity, but the majority of the time they are spending wandering about is becoming familiar with their environment. If they detect fresh scent in a likely spot it will be filed as a likely ambush spot. If a place is thermally favourable and humid it may be filed as a potential nesting spot. They also move about in search of mates, to defend territory, etc etc. This may be misinterpreted as intelligence but while it does demonstrate some complexity, it is not indicative of intelligence. The same behaviours can be programmed by unsophisticated, unchanging algorithms literally completely lacking any intelligence. remarkable as some of these behaviours may be *for a snake* they are still very basic compared to higher animals.

While studying animal behaviour at university I first saw how basic algorithms could produce surprisingly complex behaviours, without the need for any intelligence at all.
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Nero Egernia said:


> A species doesn't need to be intelligent to successfully survive on earth. Look at the humble starfish, for example. They don't have a brain as we recognize it, and here they are with fossil records that date back several hundred million years ago.



Great example. While not as advanced as even a Carpet Python, a creature like a starfish does demonstrate fairly complex behaviour including the ability to change foraging behaviours and activity patterns in response to changing conditions, an ability to navigate, etc etc, all literally without having a brain at all, let alone any form of true intelligence. The fact that these behaviours exist without any intelligence at all is a clear demonstration that people confuse these traits as something requiring or demonstrating intelligence.
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GBWhite said:


> Been following this thread and thought I'd provide a couple of links to studies done on translocated snakes that I plucked out of my reference folder just in case you couldn't locate any online.
> 
> https://www.researchgate.net/public...kes_Notechis_scutatus_in_a_suburban_landscape
> 
> ...



Thanks for putting up links to these studies (there are of course many more). Two if these show greater than 50% mortality, the other... well, I could say a little about the study... I was based at the same research facility at the time it was being carried out. It was carried out under Dr. Brian Malone, who I was unfortunate enough to have as one of my lecturers years earlier. He literally was stoned for most of his lectures, generally was literally incapable of holding his head upright for most of his lectures, sometimes would literally spend more than half the time in his own lectures staring blankly into space, completely unresponsive. The year before this study was carried out I taught him how to use the dichotomous key in Cogger (when he was a senior lecturer, I was an undergraduate, and I was sick of him continuously misindentifying species). In the same year I taught him how to sex Bearded Dragons after he showed an adult 'female' to a group of students with obvious hemipene bulges and I figured I needed to speak up (this was two years after I'd read one of his papers which involved sexing agamids and I'd gone up to him personally because his paper didn't make sense and contradicted what other researchers had found, and he basically said I was an idiot because I was just a first year student).

Even so, one more death in that study would have brought it to 50% and it's not too far out of line with most studies showing greater than 50%.


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## Yellowtail (Feb 20, 2020)

OK now after only 3 days tonight it's back!
I relocated it 800m in the opposite direction to the previous 4 times, the other side of a deep valley and several raging torrent creeks and it using it's instinctive abilities has navigated back climbed over the roller door and found the same gap in the partition wall as before.
I walked down in the valley yesterday and I could not cross the creeks.
How about some advice please from all you experts! What do I do with it?
Is there a sport racing homing pythons?


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## dragonlover1 (Feb 20, 2020)

you could send it to me, I don't think it could find it's way back from Sydney


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## nuttylizardguy (Feb 20, 2020)

Sdaji said:


> Dr. Brian Malone, who I was unfortunate enough to have as one of my lecturers years earlier. He literally was stoned for most of his lectures, generally was literally incapable of holding his head upright for most of his lectures, sometimes would literally spend more than half the time in his own lectures staring blankly into space, completely unresponsive. The year before this study was carried out I taught him how to use the dichotomous key in Cogger (when he was a senior lecturer, I was an undergraduate, and I was sick of him continuously misindentifying species). In the same year I taught him how to sex Bearded Dragons after he showed an adult 'female' to a group of students with obvious hemipene bulges and I figured I needed to speak up (this was two years after I'd read one of his papers which involved sexing agamids and I'd gone up to him personally because his paper didn't make sense and contradicted what other researchers had found, and he basically said I was an idiot because I was just a first year student).
> 
> Even so, one more death in that study would have brought it to 50% and it's not too far out of line with most studies showing greater than 50%.



mmm .... defamation of the man's character . I can't see any university allowing that ( an incompetent lecturer or researcher wont last long ).

If he sees that I imagine he will go after the owners of this board legally even if he can't find you.


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## Sdaji (Feb 21, 2020)

nuttylizardguy said:


> mmm .... defamation of the man's character . I can't see any university allowing that ( an incompetent lecturer or researcher wont last long ).
> 
> If he sees that I imagine he will go after the owners of this board legally even if he can't find you.



I'm sure he no longer works there, but nothing I've said is untrue, and the fact that he was smoking marijuana on campus every day was no secret. His office absolutely reeked of it until the faculty said he couldn't smoke in there and he then smoked at the nature reserve, everyone was well aware of it. He routinely stood in front of thousands of students clearly stoned out of his mind for several years, it wasn't a secret, everyone openly spoke about and was aware of it from students to senior faculty staff, countless people routinely saw him smoking weed on campus. It was quite a surprise that he lasted as long as he did.


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## Richard Biffin (Feb 21, 2020)

https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http...htWMRgmyYRciZPUyuyhKFE2TtJlhMVEHumGqgw_Un9pfA


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## Sdaji (Feb 21, 2020)

Richard Biffin said:


> https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/396449/study-finds-fish-have-better-memories-than-humans?fbclid=IwAR3_d1jYvpS66ab6IQUHEj49S25FXKtc2JP9GKtyqpK2ncnJUHlUzdoL71w&h=AT3pDF9EQ_ikPXLXVJ-NJ4JBEwfED6ay3alcvqvVOFr_vJELjIl-8Bgl_i-xp4qGN9Y04fYRPOH9BfqDioGUteDUYQpN9INveep58gv8ufyBXJ8LlSrNkl2KwfbQGTQupSSyo3711htWMRgmyYRciZPUyuyhKFE2TtJlhMVEHumGqgw_Un9pfA



Memory is not the same as intelligence. Fish can not comprehend let alone remember things humans can. If the ability to remember an extremely simple thing for as long as possible is your measure of intelligence, a carefully-stored post-it note is more intelligent than any living thing which has ever existed.


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## Nero Egernia (Feb 21, 2020)

Yellowtail said:


> OK now after only 3 days tonight it's back!
> I relocated it 800m in the opposite direction to the previous 4 times, the other side of a deep valley and several raging torrent creeks and it using it's instinctive abilities has navigated back climbed over the roller door and found the same gap in the partition wall as before.
> I walked down in the valley yesterday and I could not cross the creeks.
> How about some advice please from all you experts! What do I do with it?
> Is there a sport racing homing pythons?



Is there a particular reason why you keep relocating it? If all your birds and rodents are in secure snake proof cages then what's the harm in allowing the python to remain where it is? I occasionally get the resident dugite and tiger snake sniffing around my rodent colony, and a hawk trying its luck at the quail aviary, but after a few days they all give up and turn their attentions elsewhere. A few months later, however, they return, and the whole process happens all over again. It doesn't worry me, though. My cages are secure and the predators are just effectively wasting their time. Still, it's nice seeing them visiting my residence. 

I think the take home message here is that animals often surprise us - whether it's with their intelligence, problem solving skills, or their incredibly refined instincts. It's an interesting thread and I enjoyed reading most of it. I don't want to be that kind of person, but the threads posted in the last few months have kind of been a little boring in my opinion.


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## Yellowtail (Feb 21, 2020)

I have a big eastern brown resident under a shipping container site office I keep rodents in and I am happy for it to stay there and there are a huge number of other snakes including carpets on my property that are not a worry.
The problem with this carpet is it gets into a shed where I have a lot of rodent growing cages and climbs down onto the cages where it tries hard to get at the rats and/or mice and in the process can dislodge lids and even push cages off the shelves. This has happened when another carpet gained entry and released a lot of rats into a big shed full of stuff, it was a major drama catching them all. I have resorted to tying down the cages with straps.
Wild snakes are also a possible source of parasites and diseases.
It's very difficult to secure a roller door when pythons can come down from the roof and over the roll and this one has worked out how to get through the internal wall via a gap that is very hard to secure.
My parrot aviaries are secure but the birds make very loud distress calls when a snake is around and this can be a pain at 3am but I just move those from the immediate vicinity and now the birds think it's a game and have trained me to remove snakes. They don't get alarmed with wallabies or koalas but freak out over cane toads in the vicinity, even more than snakes or lace monitors.


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## CF Constrictor (Feb 21, 2020)

Mine are definitely smarter than me , im the one who goes out to work for a living , they just lie around all day looking good :-b


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## Yellowtail (Mar 28, 2020)

It's back!
3 weeks ago as an experiment I fed it a big rat then relocated it approx 2k away as the crow flies down in a valley approx 300m altitude lower than my property but accessible only by a 10k drive around a big loop so this should have confused it's navigation if it uses location memory or dead reckoning.
It must have some magnetic location skill unless it has a built in GPS chip.
I found it in exactly the same spot in my shed last night.


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## Sdaji (Mar 28, 2020)

Haha, that's pretty cool. It's not a 'skill' but it's definitely a very cool ability. You'll definitely find it's not at all using any for of navigation involving memory of the route you took from home to away in order to get back along the reverse of the same route. It would be very interesting to know exactly how this location/direction recognition works. Magnetic sensory ability wouldn't help since even with this ability the snake is being driven in a car at an indicenrable speed and changing direction, rather than the snake navigating its own way there and back. If you wanted to test this you could next time put a magnet next to it while you drove (the car would have its own magnetic fields which would have interfered with this sense anyway). I'd be so impressed with this critter's ability and urge to be with me that I'd just let it stay. It certainly seems to have earned its place there. Then again I'd sort of be wanting to keep putting it to the test!

If you fitted a GPS tracker to this snake and released it in multiple locations you'd quickly get an idea of how it is navigating (it will probably be traveling in a straight line until it finds a familiar navigation aid such as a ridge, road, river, etc then moving along to a familiar location then going from there). It would also be very interesting to see what type of daytime shelter it finds while travelling through unfamiliar areas.


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## Yellowtail (Mar 28, 2020)

I'm happy for it to stay around except I have had problems with them pushing rodent cages off shelves and it's not easy catching all the rats/mice in a big shed full of stuff. My property is crawling with snakes but this little one keeps invading my shed.
I will feed it again and have another go at snake proofing the shed before I decide what to do.
How about we start a competition with homing python races like they do with pigeons?
Racing pigeons are transported hundreds of kilometres and they seem to be able to quickly establish their location and know which way to fly back. Could a python have the same ability?


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## Herpetology (Mar 28, 2020)

Yellowtail said:


> I'm happy for it to stay around except I have had problems with them pushing rodent cages off shelves and it's not easy catching all the rats/mice in a big shed full of stuff. My property is crawling with snakes but this little one keeps invading my shed.
> I will feed it again and have another go at snake proofing the shed before I decide what to do.
> How about we start a competition with homing python races like they do with pigeons?
> Racing pigeons are transported hundreds of kilometres and they seem to be able to quickly establish their location and know which way to fly back. Could a python have the same ability?



Get a snake repeller... duh

On a serious note, couldn’t you make some make shift “barriers” using dowel across the front of the tubs to prevent them sliding out?


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## Flaviemys purvisi (Mar 28, 2020)

I did this years ago with a green tree snake. Caught in on top of the front sliding door to the house where my resident Perron's tree frogs lived... I relocated it approximately 1.5 km away... Nothing at all fancy, straight road drive to the border of our property. The next day it was back on top of the front door again looking for frogs.


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## Yellowtail (Mar 28, 2020)

Herptology said:


> Get a snake repeller... duh
> 
> On a serious note, couldn’t you make some make shift “barriers” using dowel across the front of the tubs to prevent them sliding out?


I have secured the lab cages but the shed also contains 36 large growing cages (72 litre) that overhang the shelves by a fair bit and I have used straps across the front of some but they can even tip over if a reasonable size python gets on the overhang.

Last time 50 rats escaped when a python tipped over one of the top tubs which took out others on the way down. The rats can't get out of the shed but there is a lot of stuff in there making them hard to catch plus 5 freezers where rats can chew the wiring.
This photo was before I had so many tubs and strapped them down.


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## Flaviemys purvisi (Mar 28, 2020)

That's a proper setup right there.


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## Yellowtail (Mar 28, 2020)

Most of my breeders are in 120 lab cages in a converted shipping container "Donga" but it is 100% snake proof


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