The Surprising Social Lives of Pythons

Ball pythons were long assumed to be solitary, but scientists discovered the snakes in captivity prefer each others’ company when given the chance to live socially.

The ball python does not seem like a snake with hidden depths. Small African pythons, they’re the second most popular pet reptile in the world, beloved for their rich colors, intricate patterns and docile tempers. They are easily bred and almost always kept alone.

“People don’t think of certain snakes as social at all, especially in the reptile hobby,” said Morgan Skinner, a quantitative ecologist who studied at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario. “And they tend to keep them alone or isolated, because of these preconceptions.”

But in a study published last week in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, Dr. Skinner and his colleagues show that ball pythons are much cuddlier with one another than anyone had guessed.

The study of snake social behavior has been undergoing a renaissance over the past few years, said Noam Miller, who is an author on the paper and also at Wilfrid Laurier. Researchers have tended to focus on garter snakes and rattlesnakes, which both give birth to live young, spend winters together massed in dens and form “friendships” during active seasons.

While working on his doctorate in Dr. Miller’s lab, Dr. Skinner began wondering how snakes not known to be social interacted with one another.

Because ball pythons lay eggs and don’t have live births and have no need to hibernate, they seemed like the perfect study candidate. In 2020, Dr. Skinner and his colleague Tamara Kumpan placed a mixed-sex group of six pythons for 10 days in a large enclosure — one with enough plastic shelters for each snake — and left a camera running.