How to Handle a Pueblan Milk Snake

Video Transcript

"Now captive bred milk snakes as I said before make an excellent pets. Most of them are pretty docile they're used to people but if you're going to handle your snake, there's a couple things you want to keep in mind. Never grab a snake from the top because that's how predators attack, they attack from above. So when you're handling your milk snake of course I took the glass off this enclosure, it usually has a sliding glass door. But you open up the sliding glass door, you gently stick your hand in, make sure the snake is aware of your presence and gently, put your hand underneath it and pull the snake out of the cage. Snakes have a very long spine, and it's very actually sensitive spine if you're not supporting the entire snakes' body, the snake will feel uncomfortable and not safe and squirm around you want to make sure you support its entire body. Another thing to keep in mind is that snakes have a very excellent sense of smell. Their tongue helps gather little tiny scent molecules that are in the air, they bring their tongue inside of their mouth, and on the roof of their mouth there's a special organ called Jacobson?s organ which sends messages to the snakes brain of what they are smelling. Now, humans, we need to breathe in thousands and thousands and thousands of little scent molecules to get a good whiff of something. Snakes only two or three little tiny scent molecules to get a good whiff of something so they have an excellent excellent sense of smell. So make sure you wash your hands very well before you go into the snakes enclosure because if you have any smell of a prey item such as mouse of a rodent on your hand, the snake can smell that and accidentally mistake you for a prey item and bite. Now they all have teeth, they're all more than capable of making you bleed and sometimes that just comes with the territory of owning a snake. You will get bit."