Accident! Advice wanted

[Pythoninfinite]

Wookie, you wrote:

Mine fall off door frames and **** they're climbing on all the time. Pretty resilient suckers. No kinks or blood and eating fine. He'll be fine

then you wrote:

Bar preventing the snakes from climbing I don't see how I can prevent the falls mate? I don't put them on unstable surfaces in an attempt to see them fall and I obviously don't leave them out unattended.

In this case, with no obvious signs of injury or change in behaviour alongside a normal feed I think the snake in question is going to be fine.

Ps. Not saying snakes can't be injured falling, thought that was common sense.

In your first post, you suggest that you let them climb on things (doorframes etc) from which they can easily, and do frequently, fall. And then you state they're 'pretty resilient suckers' which can only suggest to newcomers that snakes are hard to damage. I'm glad you have had a rethink about that opinion, even if you have had to contradict yourself.

The original starter of this thread has done what we have all done when we get an unexpected strike, and for the most part all is well afterwards, as appears to be the case here. But to imply that snakes are not prone to injury from falls or other trauma is simply wrong. As for falling out of trees with a thud... I've lived on the mid-north coast, surrounded by forests filled with big pythons, green tree snakes and brown tree snakes, for 6 years now, and haven't heard one 'thudding' python yet.

Where do people get these stupid ideas from?

Jamie

 

[carterd]

Thud, darn it must have been the magic mushrooms, lol.
Jamie what sound would you make falling out of a tree? Thud or splat?
On 3 occasion i have witnessed carpet pythons, coiled around a possum, free fall more than 3 metres, one fell 8m, thud, swallow, then slither away.
Because they are tensed up coiled, is why they survived.
Reassurance is what i was promoting.
If he's still in ambush mode, he should be fine.

 

[Pythoninfinite]

On 3 occasion i have witnessed carpet pythons, coiled around a possum, free fall more than 3 metres, one fell 8m, thud, swallow, then slither away.

Rather careless of them I'd say - they could fall onto sharp rocks, they could impale themselves on sticks or branches, any number of fatal injuries could occur regardless of their state of tension. If they've got a 2kg possum in their coils and land on their heads, they'd be dead for sure. Pythons do NOT voluntarily free-fall from trees, even when constricting prey. You must just have carelss ones up there I reckon...

Jamie

 

[Bluetongue1]

Maybe they just like playing possum?

Pretty much every time pythons in the wild attack their prey, they risk injury of some form or another. Those that make a mistake in the process often don’t survive as a result. This is a not insignificant contributing factor to mortality rates.

As Jamie pointed out, a pythons falling from a tree while constricting its prey is abnormal. You only have to watch what your own captives do when fed whilst on a branch. Why you have been privileged to observe three such events is open to conjecture. However, I don’t believe that a python with the weight of a possum in its coils could free fall 8m onto a hard surface and remain uninjured. In addition, being in a state of full-on muscular contraction the initial area of impact would be minimised and the rate of deceleration increased. The force of impact would therefore be increased, as force = rate of change of momentum and it is concentrated over a smaller area. More force means a more severe impact.

Might I suggest that perhaps the force of the fall was reduced by falling through foliage on the way down or by landing on a substantial layer of leaf litter, or perhaps both? Just for those interested momentum = mass x velocity. A small force applied over a long period will eventually slow something down. A larger force slows it down more quickly. That is where the formula in the preceding paragraph comes from. A layer of leaf litter allows the slowing down to be spread over time and therefore reduces the force involved in stopping a falling object. The deeper the layer, the smaller the force of impact.

Blue