Taxonomy
& Species Accounts :: Ecology :: Biology :: Captive Care & Breeding
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Captive Care & Breeding |
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Captive Care Northern WLP Southern WLP Breeding |
Captive Care: Northern White-Lipped Python |
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 Figure 19: Large female northern White-Lipped Python in captivity. Behavior Wild caught species are know for biting and from my own experience I know that this is true. But there are some horror stories told about these beautiful pythons being bad tempered. I'd rather take some of these pythons than a pit bull. All the white-lipped pythons I've seen and owned yet were very alert snakes and very fast, too. CB's as well as WC specimen will hiss and try to bite when picked up out of the cage. They calm down after they are outside the cage being handled. Some people say that their CB's get quite tame with a frequent handling schedule. The black phased wlp's seem to be more docile then the golden ones. White-lipped pythons sometimes show a behavior that is uncommon to most other python species. Coming near to them they start to hiss without moving. It's a short repeated short hiss like *sss* *sss* *sss*. I noticed my first white-lipped python did this and all the other I have had and still have to do this but actually I didn't care about it because it seemed normal to me. Other wlp owners report the same experience and describe it as follows: [...] frequently hisses for no obvious reason. This hissing behavior I had never heard of [...] and it was something that I always interpreted as aggression. I have noticed a very distinct difference between the casual hiss(almost like short exhales) and the aggressive hiss (long, drawn out and loud), but would have never known the difference because this is something I've never read about in any book. [...] Dave Barker describes it like this :"WLPs "talk" using a series of small hisses. It's done on purpose. It's usually a friendly thing. Ringed pythons and reticulated pythons also do this, but WLPs are the most "vocal" snake I've ever dealt with." ( comment from Dave Barker ). In my experience, white-lipped pythons love to climb and often look for higher places for basking or shelter. For that reason you should make sure to protect the animal from getting burned by light bulbs or infrared heaters! My male white-lipped often wraps around a cage I built to protect the animals from getting burned be the bulb and crashes right into the water bowl *splash* when loosening the coils. This happens almost every night. I have yet not seen any serious wounds but some damaged scales. Other WLP keepers report the same, though. They also love to get under the water bowl and spill all the water into the enclosure or "trash" the inventory. When white-lipped pythons get into blue (prior to shed ) they get very gray
and almost look like dead! 
Figure 20: White-Lipped Pythons sleeping in funny positions. |
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© 2001-2009
by Wulf Schleip