40 Fun Facts About Ball Python

When a frightened ball python curls into its namesake ball, which body part is tucked in the middle?

Its head and neck are tucked into the centre of the ball, out of an attacker's reach. Because it balls up instead of biting, the species became an easy-to-handle favourite.

A ball python's eyes turn silvery and its colours go dull just before which regular event?

Shedding its skin happens several times a year, and the old layer comes away in one piece, turned inside out like a sock.

The claw-like spurs beside a ball python's vent are leftover traces of which ancestral body parts?

Hind legs shrank away in the ancestors of snakes, but pythons still carry remnants of them and of the pelvis. Both sexes of ball python have the spurs, which are more prominent in males.

Tests showed a pet ball python had produced embryos without any male, a process known as what?

Parthenogenesis, or virgin birth, lets a female's egg develop with no father, and it was confirmed in a ball python by comparing the mother's DNA with that of her embryos.

The ball python's genus is named after a monstrous serpent slain near Delphi by which Greek god?

Apollo killed the serpent Python in the myth and was called Pythius in memory of the victory. A French naturalist borrowed the monster's name for real snakes in 1803.

Ball pythons can strike accurately at prey they cannot see thanks to which organs lining their lips?

Heat-sensing pits along the jaws pick up the infrared glow of warm-blooded animals, even in complete darkness. Pythons evolved them separately from rattlesnakes and other pit vipers.

The ball python's scientific species name, regius, is a Latin adjective with which meaning?

Royal is the meaning of regius, from the Latin rex for king, which is why the species is also widely known as the royal python.

Unlike most snakes, which get by with one, pythons such as the ball python have two of which organ?

Lungs come as a pair in pythons, a primitive trait, while most snakes have only one working lung squeezed into their long, narrow bodies.

After a lightning-fast strike, a ball python kills the animal it has seized by which method?

Constriction means looping its body round the prey and squeezing until the heart stops, since ball pythons have no venom at all.

Breeders call captive ball pythons with colours and patterns never seen in the wild by which name?

Morphs are designer colour and pattern varieties produced by selective breeding, and thousands of them now exist. Most are purely cosmetic and do the snake no harm.

Among the several python species native to Africa, the ball python holds which distinction for size?

Smallest of Africa's pythons, the ball python reaches a maximum of about 182 cm, or six feet. Its modest size and stocky build helped make it a household favourite.

Where do wild ball pythons usually shelter, often in homes made by other animals?

Underground burrows made by mammals are the ball python's favourite refuge. The snakes spend most of their time on or below the ground, although they are able to climb.

Farming communities in West and Central Africa value wild ball pythons for controlling which pests?

Rodents are the mainstay of an adult ball python's diet, and the pest control this gives rural farmers has been valued at millions of dollars a year.

For roughly two months after laying her clutch, what does a female ball python do with her eggs?

Coils around them and stays put until they hatch: a brooding mother barely moves for about two months, guarding the clutch from predators.

Baby ball pythons slit open their shells from the inside using which temporary structure?

Egg tooth is the name for the small sharp point a hatchling uses to cut its way out. A newborn ball python weighs only about 86 grams on average.

Young ball pythons under about 70 cm long hunt mainly which animals before moving on to mammals?

Small birds are the main prey of young ball pythons. Adult males, which climb more than females, keep taking feathered prey more often.

Which ball python pattern, linked to a wobble syndrome, was banned from one society's shows?

Spider ball pythons carry a gene tied to tremors and poor coordination, so the International Herpetological Society stopped allowing their sale at its events.

The oldest ball python on record died at about 62 after spending 59 years at which American zoo?

Saint Louis Zoo kept her for 59 of her 62 years, about double what a well-kept ball python normally reaches. Most live 15 to 30 years in captivity.

A ball python never blinks because each eye is covered by what, in place of a movable eyelid?

A clear scale called a spectacle, or brille, covers each eye permanently. It is really a pair of fused, transparent eyelids, so the snake's eyes are always closed.

A ball python flicks its forked tongue to carry scent particles to which structure inside its mouth?

Jacobson's organ analyses the particles the tongue delivers, and the fork tells the snake which side a smell is stronger on, helping it track prey.

A 2017 US outbreak investigated by the CDC was linked to ball pythons carrying which bacteria?

Salmonella is carried by ball pythons, as by other reptiles, and four of the five patients questioned in the investigation had one of the snakes at home.

Rather than chasing a meal, the heavy-bodied ball python catches prey using which hunting strategy?

Lying in ambush suits a stocky snake: it picks a good site, pulls back its neck and waits, then strikes fast when something comes within reach.

Wild pythons, the ball python's family, are native to Africa, Asia and which other continent?

Australia completes the python family's Old World range. No python is native to the Americas, even though the family includes some of the biggest snakes on Earth.

Unlike a hen's brittle egg, the large eggs laid by a ball python have shells of which texture?

Leathery, flexible shells cover the eggs, and a ball python lays up to eleven of them in a single clutch.

Wild ball pythons live mainly in which African habitat, often on cleared farmland too?

Savanna grassland and open forest are the ball python's home, usually close to open water where the snakes can cool off in hot weather.

Once its prey is dead, how does a ball python eat a meal that may be thicker than its own body?

Swallows it whole thanks to flexible skull joints, breathing through a special tube in the floor of its mouth while its jaws are full.

What is the main threat to wild ball pythons across West Africa?

Poaching for the international pet market is the chief threat, and the species is also hunted for its meat and for use in traditional medicine.

Adult female ball pythons, which also have longer jaws, differ from adult males in which other way?

They grow larger than males, a difference that only appears in adults: hatchlings of both sexes start out the same size.

Ball pythons wait out the hottest, driest months in a dormant state known by which name?

Aestivation is the hot-weather counterpart of winter dormancy, a light sleep with a lowered metabolism that ball pythons enter in their daytime refuges.

A wobble seen in one ball python pattern, once blamed on nerves, is traced to a defect where?

Inner ear defects are now known to cause the tremors and loss of coordination that keepers call wobble, and the trait is inherited along with the pattern's gene.

Which people of southeastern Nigeria revere the ball python and hold a funeral if one is killed?

Igbo tradition treats the ball python as a symbol of the earth because it travels so close to the ground, and many communities still build a small coffin for one that dies.

In northwestern Ghana, home of ball pythons, folklore says a python saved people by becoming what?

A log is what the python became, letting the people cross a river and escape their enemies. A taboo against harming or eating pythons there honours the favour.

Hunters in which West African country sell ball python eggs and gravid females to snake ranches?

Togo's ranches buy from rural hunters: in one survey, 58 of them reported collecting 3,000 live ball pythons and 5,000 eggs in a single year.

George Shaw gave the ball python its first scientific name in 1802, placing it in which snake genus?

Boa regia was Shaw's name for the species. It only received its present scientific name, with the genus changed, from two French zoologists in 1844.

The ball python's native range runs east to Uganda from which country on Africa's Atlantic coast?

Senegal marks the western end of a range that crosses West and Central Africa through Cameroon to Sudan and Uganda, all just north of the equator.

Lacking fangs, a ball python holds struggling prey with four upper rows of teeth shaped how?

Curved backward like hooks, the teeth stop prey pulling free and help move it toward the throat. Two more rows line the lower jaw.

Once her eggs have hatched after about two months, what does a mother ball python do for her young?

Leaves them alone from the start: hatchlings are independent at once, though they tend to stay in the area for months.

Male ball pythons, whose claw-like spurs tend to be bigger, use them for which purpose?

Gripping a mate during copulation is the spurs' job, and although both sexes have them, males tend to carry the more prominent pair.

Which blood-feeding parasites are the main external pests found on wild ball pythons in West Africa?

Ticks are the ball python's primary parasites, and males tend to carry slightly more of them than females do.

Until a few days before hatching, the eggs in a ball python's clutch typically do what?

Stick together in a single clump, then come unstuck from each other a few days before the young emerge.