How to Handle Green Tree Pythons

hi everyone we've had a lot of requests on how to handle green tree pythons so today we have four of our green trees out here for you to see and we're going to be showing you some tips and tricks on how to handle them green tree pythons I've known to be kind of a more nippy species of snake and they don't really enjoy being handled but if you are willing to work with them and spend a lot of time just handling them getting them used to you then you can make them a handleable snake obviously these are not their enclosures we just brought their perches upstairs so that you can see them in the light because of their personalities our first tip is to give them removable perches so that they're not in their cages when you're trying to get them out you can just take their perch right out of the tank and then you can work with them out here next handle them during the daytime when they are asleep since they're nocturnal they're awake at night and usually hunting for food and if you try to handle them then they're much more likely to strike we actually tried filming this last night about an hour and a half before their lights went out so we thought it'd be okay but they knew their life cycle and they were already starting to get a little bit testy to worry hi you tried to get the camera yeah I did so we had to put our filming until today when you first start handling your green tree python you may want to use gloves just for your own protection either one or both hands you don't have to use them but it might be a good idea at first although we don't often use gloves ourselves so we do keep a pair of these down in our green tree python room just in case we need them first remove the snake out of its enclosure with its removable perch so that they're out of their comfort zone they might be a little bit more cage territorial if you try to pick them up while they're inside their enclosure next since she's been a perfect strength pose here we're gonna have to watch her body language closely I'm going to just set my hand underneath her so she knows that I'm here she's not gonna strike down words she might strike back up at me we'll kind of see what happens here if they come on to your hands that works they're probably not going to strike at you unless you are approaching them but once you have them cupped in your hands you do not want to pull them off of there that's a very important thing to note with green tree pythons instead with adults like this one you can slide them off of their perch and this is a very slow process unless they decide to start moving themselves and again I'm watching her body language constantly but if she has her nose right up to me I'm not worried about her striking because I am NOT approaching her she's the one approaching my hand and then if you kind of tickle them in the back or just kind of rub their back end here that kind of inspires them to move off of the perch and then you can provide their hand as a perch and stay as you can see she is pretty well anchored right here on the perch so now if you have a snake that's kind of stubborn and it doesn't want to come off completely you can rock the snake or the perch back and forth a little bit to kind of loosen them up again it's going to be their decision to come off of that perch rather than you pulling them she's getting a little further towards the end and then we can just slide the perch out and obviously have your hand there for them to slide onto so that they can feel secure once they're out on your hand you want to constantly be watching their body language still it's not over just because you have them off of their perch they're not like a ball python that'll be just sitting content in your hands always be watching their head and see that she's still in a strike post so I'm not going to approach her face at all otherwise she will definitely strike at me instead I'm just gonna move her around a little bit maybe get her used to me touching her from behind where she can't strike me another thing to watch out for is their tail this is a very fragile tail on the green tree python they have very small vertebrae it's a very skinny tail so make sure you're not pulling on it at all just let it grip wherever it wants to grip the reason why their tail is a different color and it's so skinny is because green tree pythons will take their tail and they'll wiggle it around them to try to attract prey to come on over thinking it's a worm as you can see Delores here is pretty relaxed she's no longer in her strike post she's actually resting her neck and she was resting her head on my thumb just earlier and that's because she's out she's found a comfortable position on my hand and nobody's approaching her in a threatening way she has realized that we are no longer threats but this is Dolores she was our first screen true Python she is a Fiat green tree python and we've had her ever since she was a little baby so she has grown up with us although we haven't handled her much so it's kind of surprising how friendly she is right now so gonna put her back we're going to put her back in her actual enclosure because she wouldn't want to just go back onto the stick to be honest so let's show you how to put your green tree back inside of its tank to put her back in we're going to introduce her back to her perch since she likes to go up I'm going to put her underneath her second perch so she immediately finds one and now I'm just going to let her leave my hand and find where she wants to go and see she's kind of losing grip on my hand here if they don't want to leave your hand you can kind of stroke their back half and that'll make them want to leave as she found her highest perch of course which is where she's going to coil up I'm gonna lay her tail on a perch so she is completely suspended and now she can figure out where she wants to go well Delores Sam is a pretty easy time there so we're going to move on to her boyfriend Kronk this is another Viet green tree python and we've only ever held him three times we moved him from his previous owners enclosure to a shipping bag then we moved him from that shipping bag to his quarantine enclosure at our house and then we moved him from quarantine to the green tree python room so those were just three times we've ever held him and every time we use gloves we've never tried to hold him without gloves so this is going to be interesting so just like before we're going to just watch his body language the whole time of course he is already perked up I'm going to lay my hand underneath him just so that he knows that I'm here and then we'll just kind of see what he does from there I'm going to kind of pet him underneath to see if that inspires him to get off of his perch I mean I see you're looking right at me but sometimes touching him from behind he theoretically he shouldn't strike me from the front and let's see he doesn't want to come off of his perch I'm gonna pet him a little bit more over here he is starting to loosen his grip a little bit and I'm going to move this perch slowly back and forth as you can see he's moving closer and closer to the edge of the perch which is what we want no strikes yet which is great I don't want to jinx myself though because he's right by my fingers we're almost there oK we've got his front half off of the perch and now we have to convince them that it's a good idea to get the second half off now we're going since he definitely doesn't want to come off of the perch now we're going to turn it in the opposite direction that he is coiled up on to it because that should also help then we can kind of slide fingers underneath while his body comes off of it can't make up his mind which and he wants to go on there we go see his body's uncoiling trying to go back onto that perch but it's so loose that I can just slide him right back off again and there we go gonna put this perch just in there for now so that you can concentrate just on being my on my hands well that that was great we didn't get any strikes at all and I think most of that was due to the fact that we had a very very calm demeanor ourselves so that he didn't have any reason to freak out and we just slowly at his own pace allowed him to leave the perch and go onto my hand again this is Kronk he is our male green tree python and he will be our breeder to our other females he'll be breeding with Dolores we saw earlier and also Cruella who was the green tree we unboxed in a previous video we found him off of Craigslist believe it or not so we drove about five hours spontaneously one evening to go pick him up because we were really looking for an adult male and just like before you can see he's definitely slowing down because he's getting more comfortable and he's realizing that if I were a predator I would have eaten him by now so he's not seeing me as a threat so we're going to put him back in his enclosure - and then we'll move on to some smaller green trees now we're going to move on to some younger green tree python so we have two more to show you this one will be our last biank green tree he was also part of the unboxing video from several months ago and this guy is a mover he made dart right out onto my hands but it'll be a good example of you know a different personality type for a green tree python for you to see how we handle them but since he's so small we do have to be very careful since his bones are so fragile especially that tail it just takes one wrong move to break a bone this is how we set up our removable perches we have a closet dowel and we take a stainless steel screw so that it doesn't rust in a human environment and we slide it through these pre-drilled holes through the PVC and that holds it in place and it keeps its orientation - now we're going to take him out he is okay he's so cute he is fast asleep or he looks it and he's probably awake trying to pretend he's asleep so that we don't bother him but we're going to do the same thing place my hand underneath good morning buddy oh you're about to shed he's going into blue all right so we're going to nope like I said he's a mover he comes right on out so with snakes like that you do have to be ready for it and just know their personality so that you can be there when they come on out he isn't so much a striker unless it's the nighttime and he's wide awake trying to get food but during the daytime he actually isn't that bad here is his very skinny tail and this is normal he's not underweight or anything this is just a green tree python tail see how it's a different color at the end that helps make it look like a worm to a potential prey item for the snake and I'm going to just keep my fingers open that's another tip and that way they can weave in and out of your fingers to find a comfortable spot so I'm going to let him move or he wants again the smaller the snake or the younger the snake the more fragile they are so I'm just letting him go everywhere it make his own decisions I'm not trying to force him by any means if you've seen the unboxing video where we get him for the first time take him out of his shipping bag he was a dark red color he was very beautiful and he still is he's just turned into more of an orange and green tree pythons in case you don't already know this they're called green trees because no matter what color they are as babies which is either red or yellow they always turn green as adults and even now you can see some green scales starting to come in so it's been kind of fun watching his transformation this little guy does not have a name yet so if you have any suggestions let us know we do have a Disney Villains theme for our green trees although we don't know the sex of this guy yet he's a little bit young so if you have any gender-neutral ideas comment below with them we're going to put him back and take out our last creature Python for this video which is now to be Ock once it's a sarong that we picked up from tinleigh the great thing about these perches is you can just slide them on in put the bolts right on through and then you're good to go finally here's our last green tree of today he is a again a sarong and he actually does not have a name we got him from a breeder and we're really looking forward to breeding green trees with more of these blue scales so he should throw some nice coloration into his babies these are known for being a much more friendlier gentler green tree as opposed to the biacks so he shouldn't be as big of an issue to take out he's definitely not as defensive not nearly as defensive as the other three we had out he's not in a strike pose at all he's just kind of checking things out and slowly coming off of his perch now that he's loosening up I'm sliding my hand under these available spots underneath his belly and we have an anchored tail again so now we're going to turn the perch in the opposite direction of where he's coiled so that when he comes off he can go right into my hands here we go almost there now we just have that tail and now it's such a loose grip that we can slowly pull the perch right out and there you have it you can really see all of his colors when he's completely out like this - you may have noticed that he not once was in a strike pose and that could either be from the breeder having handled him quite a bit or it could just be that this subspecies of green tree has a more gentler disposition our plan with this little guy is to either find a female sarong to breed him with to kind of keep those lines pure or or in addition to we might breed him to our a rue female thats dumpsters that we didn't show you today because then we can have some Aroo sarong crosses that have some nice blue the first three snakes we check out we're all be ocular pythons which are known for having the biggest attitudes of pretty much all snakes but as you saw if you handle them right and you watch their body language we just took out three one of which I we hadn't held it a long time and we didn't get struck at once keep in mind that you have to watch the behavior of your green tree python to see if they are okay with being handled if you handle them too and they're becoming too stressed they can get sick or they might stop eating or they might become more aggressive so if you notice any of those things starting to happen when you're trying to work with your snake just leave them alone and they might just prefer to be a hands-off snake just a display animal instead hopefully this video helped you out these tips should aid you and holding your green tree pythons and don't be afraid to wear gloves the first few times until you get your confidence to start handling them without gloves but as long as you watch their body language and respect the animal of course they will respect you back in return so thanks for watching and we'll see you next week [Music]

Channel: Snake Discovery

Views: 948,665

Keywords: green tree python, chondro python, green tree snake, handling snakes, how to hold a snake, how to hold snakes, snakes, reptiles, pets, animals, chondro, green tree pythons, how to tame, friendly green tree python

Id: BF3bruy8a6M

Length: 13min 45sec (825 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 22 2017