Sensitive Olfactory

[guidofatherof5]

The other day I was feeding some salmon to some of my guests. I had been using a pair of hemostats to give out some small pieces to babies.
I then switched gears to feeding some larger pieces to adults. When I opened the enclosure and went to pick up a piece of fish I noticed a small piece of substrate stuck to the end of the hemostats. That's all that was on the end. No fish just substrate. With this groups water dish right in front of me I swished the hemostats in the water, effectively cleaning the substrate off.
I proceeded with the feeding of these monsters. Within moments I had a nice gang of female radixes in front of me but I also noticed a couple up in the water dish fishing.
This was unusual as they have never reacted that way before when I have fed fish. The only difference was the "swish" of the hemostats.
What a great ability to have to ad in survival. Picking up the minute(to us) scent particle of the fish in the water.
I think the next time I will just swish the hemostats and not offer any food to see if I get the same reaction.
The more I work with these wonderful snakes more more I appreciate them.

P.S My neighbor installed a small pond in his back yard. One day I asked him how it was working out.
He said everything was fine and that he noticed a few garter snakes around the pond from time to time.
The pond is stocked with some small koi.
I'm not sure how long it will be stocked with Koi.

[kibakiba]

You might find some hulk-like radix around your house soon!

[RedSidedSPR]

That's really cool!! I've see the same thing with my snake, just didn't come to that same conclusion..

[infernalis]

Feeding time is so much fun with these snakes.

[d_virginiana]

That's so cool! If mine is being picky I can splash the food around in his water bowl, and he'll immediately go for it, but that might be because he used to eat so many live fish that he just expects fish to be there.
I wonder if garters watching larger koi would be the equivalent of us watching those shows where people eat gigantic hamburgers or something?

[RedSidedSPR]

They probable are just thinking "FOOD".

[ConcinusMan]

One thing I noticed is that they don't necessarily have to flick their tongue to smell. If I hold food in front of Big Bertha or some of my other snakes, you can see them actively "sniffing" through their nostrils instead of using their tongue. Then they sometimes nail the food without ever sticking their tongue out. Seriously.

[RedSidedSPR]

Me too! Mine do that! Sometimes I think they're not smelling at all, just seeing the food dangling, but I'm pretty sure they don't have to flick the tounges.

[ConcinusMan]

I think that the tongue flicking is more for smelling long distance. The forks tell them which direction the smell is coming from. But if the food is right in front of them, they can get an adequate number of particles to smell the food without flicking.

[RedSidedSPR]

Yeah, that sounds right. I mean, mine still flick them close up, but they definitely don't NEED too.

Heck, sometimes they don't even need to smell it. They see the movement of the hemostats, BAM.