To the guy with the bush experiment:
Years ago I had a diamond python who not only liked to be held but craved human company. We used to let him climb around in a small tree we had in the front yard and he loved it but he also always came back to us when he had had enough. Being insomniac as I am, I was often up all night and asleep during the day, he would escape his enclosure and crawl under my pillow and sleep with me until I woke up, then he would follow me around until I had to pick him up so he was out of danger at which time he would wrap himself around my middle and stay there until he was ready to explore or feed. When we had visitors, he would escape his enclosure and come all the way downstairs to hang out with the people going from one to another and spending considerable time with each. He actually changed a lot of our friends misconceptions about snakes and there was not one of them that didn't end up loving snakes as a result of his personality. I also went to a reptile show at Darling Harbour one day and the guy there had a huge diamond python he was showing to people and boasting about his fantastic handling abilities. I went over to say hello and he got quite annoyed with me because his snake wanted to come to me and he ended up telling me to go away, when I went away he was struggling with the snake as it wanted to follow me. So to say they are just tolerating people or they don't know the difference or they would choose a bush over you is all dependent on the individual snake. I could be totally wrong but that is just my personal experience with 2 snakes. The spotted python pair we have at the moment don't really get handled but the male seems very interested, where as the female is very shy. Same with our Gippy hatchlings, one eats from my fingers the other runs as soon as I open the enclosure, they are all different so maybe some actually do like handling and human company.