Teeth stopped growing back

[kaab78]

I have a 10 yr old Diamond python who has no teeth! They have just stopped growing. I know its common for snakes to shed teeth and have them grow back over their lifetime but it is coming on 12 months now and she now has no teeth at all and no sign of anything coming in. Last few months she just wont eat. The interest is there. And we have tried smaller food items that would be easier to take but now she is just leaving them. Has anyone experienced this?

 

[Sdaji]

I'm guessing you're not too familiar with snake teeth. No doubt your snake does have a normal mouth full of teeth. If you actually had a snake with no teeth you'd have some sort of extreme problem. If you're sufficiently inclined you can inspect the mouth (using the edge of something like a credit card can open the mouth and allow you to take a look). Their teeth are not like human teeth or crocodile teeth which stick right out, they're small, fine and curved backwards and may not be obvious to a novice observer. Stick your finger in the snake's mouth if you need further confirmation that the teeth are not there (if the snake actually had no teeth this wouldn't be a problem for your finger, and your finger would slide right out of the mouth).

Do a web search for some small python mouths to get an idea of what they look like. You'll see plenty of pictures which show that the teeth aren't always obvious, but your Diamond does have about 100 little teeth.

The feeding issue is a common one, there's not enough information here for me to comment, but there's no shortage of discussion and advice on this topic.

 

[Herpetology]

Everyone knows all snake mouths look like this, haven’t u seen the movies



They don’t actually look like this - most snakes you won’t see the teeth/fangs at all

 

[Sdaji]

Heh, that's pretty funny.

But, it'll probably give our friend Kaab the wrong idea. That's a Rough-scaled Python and they have some of the absolute proportionately largest teeth of all snakes.

If you do an image search for "snake mouth" you'll see plenty of examples of a range of snakes, and other than than things like vipers with their two huge fangs, most snakes actually look like their mouths have no teeth unless you look closely, and even vipers can look toothless if their fangs are folded back.

Even elapids' fangs can often be very difficult to see when their mouths are wide open.