Can You Train a Snake? (A Guide To Training Your Snake)

Training a snake seems like something out of a science fiction novel. But so was keeping a pet snake until we started doing it a few decades ago then it became a lot more popular in the last few years, and now keeping a pet snake is totally normal.

So, can you train a snake? You can train a snake to trust you, be tolerant of your handling, and eat what you give it, and scientists can train snakes to push buttons and do some more advanced behaviors, but you can’t train snakes to do tricks in the way you can do with dogs or other animals.

However, training snakes can be quite challenging since it’s not really like training your dog or cat, and you need to know what you’re doing to be successful.

In this article, we’re going to discuss what you can train your snake to do, how to train your snake, and what are some of the mistakes to avoid.

Contents

How can you train a snake?

When you think of animal training, you probably imagine a dog putting out its paw to be shaken, a horse leaping over a barrier, or a parrot saying “Hello!” It’s strange to picture one of these “trick” actions performed by a snake.

Snakes have a simpler brains than most other animals, which means they are not as smart or intelligent.

But snakes are actually still kind of smart and can indeed learn. A snake is not a typical goldfish that is constantly startled by its overlooked environment. Snakes are able to adapt to new surroundings and learn to link events with one another.

In the beginning, they may see you, their owner, as an aggressor and believe that you are planning on doing them harm, but with time, they will learn that you are there to feed them and care for them.

Snakes do learn who their owners are and remember them, and even different members of their family and start to associate some of them with how well they treat them.

How to teach or train a pet snake?

Let’s talk about how to teach your snake information and behaviors now that you know what snakes are capable of.

The Basics of Training Pet Snakes

Let’s talk about how to teach your snake information and behaviors now that you know what snakes are capable of.

How to teach them it’s time for their meals

You can trach a snake to recognize its feeding time and associate it with something like its cage’s door being open.

Here is how you can train your pet snake to recognize feeding time:

Have a separate container for feeding your snake
Prepare a snake hook to handle the snake when it’s hungry. Hungry snakes bite, and the hook is there to keep you both safe.
When it’s meal time, hook your snake and move it from its cage to the feeding container.
Once the snake is completely done feeding, move it back (using the hook, of course).

With repetition, the snake will link the new container with food and will start to expect its meal in the feeding time. This also will teach your snake that you, yourself, and your hands, are not food.

How to teach them to not bite

Snakes live a tough life, and they are always on aware of the predators around them like felines and birds, so it’s no wonder that snakes have developed aggressive defensive mechanisms such as instantly biting whatever they deem threatening.

The key to teaching your snake to not bite you is to build trust. Your snake needs time to learn that you are safe and will not harm them.

Give it time to adjust

Snakes need a lot longer to adjust to captivity than other pets. Unlike dogs and cats, snakes are not used to having a home, and this new adjustment is quite significant for them and will take time.

Your snake is also a suspicious creature by nature, so it doesn’t know what around it is safe and what is not, so give it time to learn.

Expose them to humans

Create a habitat for the snake in an area that humans frequent frequently. This could be any room in your house where the foot traffic is high.

The presence of people will assist the snake get acclimated to your voice and smell.

Give it a place to hide

Make sure your snake has several hiding places in its cage. If it feels threatened by you, it will be much more comfortable escaping than confronting you.

Spend time with your snake

Spending time with your snake helps it get used to you quickly. But you should remember to take things slowly. You can just hang around it with it still in the cage first.

Then, you can hang around with the snake’s cage door open. If the snake is comfortable, it should come to you.

Once you start handling the snake, you should let it move freely. It will crawl around you first and explore you. Let it does that.

With time, you can also start getting your snake comfortable with other people in the same way. The thing to remember is to always take things slowly and try to understand the snake’s body language.

It takes patience to train a snake, but the effort is definitely worth it.

your snake to not strike when you open the cage

Not all acquired actions are pleasant. In some cases, keepers only open the cage door to feed their snake and clean the cage very infrequently.

When this happens, the snake learns that whenever the cage is opened, food is generally forthcoming. This piques the snake’s interest, and it strikes at the first thing that comes into its lair—potentially a keeper’s finger.

Avoid this by interacting with your snake on a daily basis, and be aware of any connections you may unintentionally provide at feedings.

Some keepers propose feeding snakes in a distinct container to avoid forming these links, but this entails transferring a snake that has just eaten when it’s time to return him to his cage, which is stressful for him.

Teach your snake to eat frozen mice

Snakes feed on wild mice in their natural habitat, but your pet snake can not eat wild. You can learn why feeding live mice is quite terrible for your snake here as this is a lengthy discussion on its own.

Instead, most snake owners feed their snakes frozen or thawed mice. The key to making your snake eat the frozen mice is to make it think the dead animal is actually alive by tossing it around the cage.

Once the snake gets used to the smell and taste of dead food, it will start to enjoy it.

Why is training your pet snake difficult?

Snakes are especially difficult to train for two main reasons; they bite and they are not easily motivated.

They are not easily motivated

Snakes are not as easy to train as other animals because we teach all other animals using the same ways; we motivate them with food or praise, which work better for some animals than others, but it is very difficult to make it work on snakes.

Dogs will eat at any time of the day, if a dog sees something that looks like it could fit in their mouth, they are going to try to eat it. This makes it very easy to train dogs, but this is not how it works with snakes.

Snakes are extremely energy-efficient. They will not move unless they absolutely have to, and they only need to eat once every couple of weeks or so. How can you train an animal with food if they can go weeks without eating?

Snakes also don’t eat for pleasure. They hunt only to eat, and eat only to survive, so training them with food is difficult.

They bite first, think later

All Snakes will strike the instant they feel they’re threatened. They will not take even a few seconds to think about it or warn the other animal. They will not bark like dogs or meow like cats, they will simply strike and bite first, then deal with the consequences later.

This makes it very difficult to train them, because the moment you do something unfamiliar to them, they are very likely to strike and bite.

They are solitary

Snakes are solitary animals and are not motivated by social interactions with humans, other animals, or even other snakes. In fact, it was previously thought that you could only find two snakes in the same place when it was mating time.

This was found to not be completely true and that some snakes can hunt in groups to some degree, but snakes are still quite solitary. Dogs and cats can be motivated by interacting with them, but not snakes.

How Snakes are motivated?

We’ve now discussed how motivating snakes with praise or food doesn’t work as it does with other animals, how can we train snakes?

Scientists have found out that you can train a snake with food, water, and provide them with safety and a suitable, comfortable environment.

Later in the article, we are going to discuss specific things you can train your snake on so you will understand better how to motivate your snake to learn new things.

Pro Tips to be more successful in training your snake

Here are some pro tips for snake training:

Patience and positive reinforcement are key when training your snake
Always start with basic commands, such as coming to you or sitting still, before moving on to more complicated tasks
Begin training your snake in a comfortable environment where they will feel safe and secure
Be consistent with your commands and rewards, and keep your training sessions short and fun

Now let’s look at the things you should avoid when training your pet snake.

Mistakes to avoid when training your snake

Here are some common mistakes you should avoid when training your pet snake:

Don’t try to force your snake to do anything they’re not comfortable with – always use positive reinforcement
Never punish your snake for making mistakes, as this can lead to anxiety and mistrust
Don’t train your snake in an environment that is too noisy or busy, as they will find it difficult to focus
Be sure to end each training session on a positive note, so your snake will look forward to the next one

Speaking of mistakes, you can learn about more mistakes snake owners make all the time and how to avoid them in my post on why does your snake squeezes you here.

Conclusion

Training your snake can be a fun and rewarding experience, but it takes patience and understanding. By following these pro tips and avoiding common mistakes, you can help your snake learn new commands quickly and easily. Be sure to have plenty of positive reinforcement on hand, and keep training sessions short and fun – this will ensure that both you and your snake have a great time. Thanks for reading this blog post about can you train a snake and I hope that it was helpful!

If you found the information in my blog post useful, be sure to share it with your friends and family to see if they can benefit from learning how to train their pet snakes as well. You can also use the social sharing buttons at the end of the article, or check our sources after the related questions section.

Helpful Resources

Snakes show a surprising ability to learn

Scientists confirm snakes can hunt in packs

Operant conditioning in Indigo snake

Conditioned discrimination of airborne odorants by garter snakes (Thamnophis radix and T. sirtalis sirtalis).

Snakes have friends too

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