Do Ball Pythons Like To Climb?

Ball pythons are semi-arboreal and don’t just live underground like some keepers want you to believe. So yes ball pythons are semi-arboreal snake, a species many confine to snake racks, are semi arboreal. Dont keep them in snake racks. How can I make this claim? How can I make this claim when so many say ball pythons live underground. Am I going to prove it? Yes I am. I can prove it with science, and I can prove it with dozens upon dozens of images of keepers all around the world, allowing their ball pythons to climb and express the behaviours they evolved to express. By the end of this video you will say to others dont keep them in snake racks.
. First of all lets start with this paper, on the diet of ball pythons in the wild. This study analysed the diets of wild ball pythons by examining faeces or forcing regurgitation of stomach contents. This study, was done over two years and ball pythons were found in trees, not only were they found in trees but the study was conducted from 8am to 6pm, so during the day! 49/87 ball pythons surveyed found were in trees.
This study found that Snakes smaller than 70cm or just over 2ft almost exclusively fed on small birds (nestlings and immature birds). Both sexes fed exclusively on birds and mammals with a significant difference between sexes. Birds made up to 70.2% of the males diets, on the flipside females diets were made up of 66.7% mammals. When individuals over 100cm (that’s just over 3ft) are concerned the diet is almost exclusively small mammals and even then it consisted of arboreal species as well, like bush babies, bats and the giant forest squirrel.
Now I can go into detail on what they specifically ate, but I have gone through that in absolute detail in another video I made, but to summarise, the birds they were eating weren’t ground dwelling birds by any means. No they were African grey parrot juveniles because presumably they had been nest raiding, they were starlings, thrushes, warblers, pigeons and doves. They even ate multiple different species of bats.
So what do the vast majority of these prey species have in common? They are either arboreal or bloody fly! Meaning they are in arboreal positions to catch them. I know what people will say to that to try to come up with excuses, oh they must have eaten all those birds when they came to ground. Well, African grey parrots do not nest on the ground and bats do not go to ground like a pigeon does. So presumably, they are either in ambush positions in trees to snag a meal out of mid air or they are actively foraging and sneaking up on roosting bats and raiding birds nest.
Plus the paper stated, ball pythons up to 70cm, that’s roughly 2.3ft preyed almost exclusively on immature and nestling birds. And where are these birds? Up a tree! Some people will nit pick at say it’s a small sample size, well a sample size of 87 snakes is not a small sample size at all!
So when people say they live in termite mounds all year round, how do nestling parrots and other birds, bats, giant forest squirrels and bloody bush babies end up in a termite mound? The answer is they don’t, ball pythons go out hunting, and are climbing to do so. Outside of the argument of semi arboreality, the fact that wild ball pythons only eat birds up until 2ft long may explain why they can be hard to get feeding initially, because they evolved to take avian prey. And keepers in captivity are trying to force rodents on them.
And if that wasn’t enough, another study on snake diets in another location also had ball pythons included and found similar results! Birds and arboreal mammals make up a significant percentage of a ball pythons diet.
Okay next paper, Why do males and females of python regius differ in ectoparasite load? This study points out that males carry different parasites at a different yield than females. Proposing that the parasite loads differ because of different space usage, males being more arboreal than females and are collecting ticks from tree branches, as well as terrestrial ticks that the females typically get. So now semi arboreality in ball pythons has been identified in Togo and Nigeria.
look at these pictures. I downloaded 100 images of ball pythons climbing to show you that not only does science indicate they are semi arboreal but keepers are finding this out for themselves, this is not something exclusive to wild ball pythons.
Science has proved they eat birds in the wild, and look at these images, do you notice this behaviour?
Thanks for watching: Ball Pythons Are Semi Arboreal So Dont Keep Them In Snake Racks
Studies:
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