One of my red sideds decided to shed the other day, the little gal who's always been a good feeder. I offered her a worm and she saw it, came out for it, then gave up a little later. I wondered why she'd stop and got to thinking about why snakes in shed sometimes lose their appetite.
Then it hit me.
I remembered how James had noted that snakes shed their tongues; and then everything made sense.
With an extra layer of skin covering the tongue, a snake's sense of smell would be impaired, similar to how their vision is.
I also noted something else.
A lot of members, including myself, say that a snake's eyes often clear up before their shed, while sometimes they don't. My eastern garter, Fatty, is at the very end of the cycle, and when I picked her up today I noticed that her eye scales had already been shed (The old skin from her head could be manipulated loosely around and over her eye). Now I know that shed skins often have the optical scales still attached, but it's entirely possible that when a snake's eyes clear up before a shed they have either lost the scales already or the shed is imminent.
Just my two cent's.
Comments?