Training Snakes?

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Did you know you can train snakes?

After finding some helpful videos on YouTube, I decided it's about time to try training with our snakes. The behavior we'll start with is a staple behavior for almost every animal I've worked with: targeting. The concept of targeting is simple: the animal simply has to touch an object, which is called the "target," and they get a treat. Carson the Red-tailed Hawk loves chasing after her target stick:


I've even taught my pet rabbit to touch a mini-baseball bat and my cat to touch my finger. So why not teach a snake to do it?

I chose an object that would be clearly visible to our snakes. They don't have very fine vision and can only see blue and green, so I decided to try a blue lid made for cat food cans.

The first step of our training plan is associating the target with food. They've never seen this blue lid before, so we want them to learn that the blue thing means tasty food is coming. When it was time to feed Emory the rat snake this week, I presented the target, then placed a mouse on it. 


Once she understands that the blue target predicts food, she will hopefully start approaching the target on her own. Then in theory, she could follow it to the other side of her habitat, onto a scale, or out to an exercise area - but only if she wants to!

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