This is one of the reasons you should be very careful when handling a snake around your face. We also expel heat from our mouths every time we exhale. This allows them to both eat prey and anticipate any dangerous competitors nearby.īecause people don’t often cover their heads and faces indoors, snakes are aware of the heat radiating from the skull. Known as ‘pit organs’, snakes are able to sense the heat coming from other animals. Many snakes, including boas, pythons, and vipers, have sensory organs in their faces for ‘seeing’ in the dark. Remember when I said that snakes use their eyes as a sort of secondary sensing system? That it’s not as important as its other senses? The fact that your snake might not be able to see you with its eyes doesn’t mean it can’t sense you. In fact, some snakes will move to the front of their glass habitat and sit there staring, almost trying to persuade you to give it something to eat. Your snake might be staring at you because it’s waiting for a tasty treat. Your snake has been conditioned just like the dogs in that experiment. And I mean that in the nicest possible way. I can hear you now saying: ‘What does this have to do with snake staring?’ When the experimenters stopped bringing food to the dogs but still rang the bell, the dogs salivated immediately as if anticipating the presence of food even though it wasn’t there. Hunger Conditioning In SnakesĮver heard of Pavlovian conditioning? I won’t bore you with the details, but essentially, it was an experiment that conditioned dogs to associate the ringing of a bell with food being offered. If your snake shows signs of stargazing, it’s essential that you take your pet to a vet for diagnosis and treatment. This is infectious and fatal to other snakes.
Malnutrition leading to organ dysfunction.If you are standing over the enclosure, it can look as though they are staring up at you, but they are actually forced into that position by an illness. Stargazing occurs when the cervical musculature contracts, forcing the head and neck of your snack to remain in a vertical position. If you see your snake staring upward in its enclosure, you might think it’s a cute way of staring at you, but it could be a dangerous condition known as stargazing.
When a snake doesn’t blink, it’s because, well, it has no eyelids to blink with! They have a transparent scale that covers the eye to protect it from air and irritants. When a person doesn’t blink, it usually infers that they are hyper-focusing on something in front of them. They have this hypnotic open-eyed gaze that we instinctively think is the exact same as a human stare. One reason for ‘fake’ staring, is because snakes have no eyelids. Sometimes they actually are, and in one particular instance, it can be for a very bad reason. There are other reasons to think that a snake is staring at you. And no, don’t worry if constant staring is a sign your snake is lonely, snakes are quite happy to be on their own. It might not even be able to see you if you’re just a few feet away. The takeaway is: Your snake might not be staring at anything. Snake eyesight is very poor and should be considered a secondary sense for detecting changes in the environment and assessing food up close. While we rely heavily on our eyes for non-verbal communication, snakes do not. Snakes have their own way of sensing what’s around them. We humans often make the mistake of thinking animals perceive the world the same way as we do.
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