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(Python curtus brongersmai)

Blood pythons are one of my favorite snakes.  These guys get big and fat and beautiful!  I remember seeing some at a friends house once for the first time.  My friend pulled out a big female and put her on a table and I just sat and stared with that "deer-in-the-headlights" look.  I couldn't stop.  I had never seen such a big, red snake before and I knew that I would eventually have to get a pair.  Who cares if they can have a nasty attitude, right?  :)

About a year later, I was at the same friends house helping him to clean cages.  I got to a cage with a pair of bloods in it and was told that we wouldn't worry about that cage for now.  It was too much trouble.  I decided that I was up for the challenge so I went ahead and braved the impending storm.  These were two mean bloods!  I would lay pieces of newspaper on their heads and they would still strike upward from under the paper.  They have massive heads that are loaded with teeth and I'd sure hate to know what it feels like to get tagged by an adult.

Well, I managed to get the cage cleaned out by cleaning the side that they weren't on first, and then pushing them over so that I could clean the other side.  All this without any blood loss!  (But not because of lack of effort on their part.)  They hissed and struck the entire time I had my face anywhere near their glass door.  Did this persuade me not to ever keep bloods myself?  Of course not!

You can probably tell from the image up top that blood pythons come from Asia.  In fact, they are found throughout Malaysia and Sumatra.  There are three members of the blood python family.  They are all known by many common names, but the ones that I own are generally called Malaysian Blood pythons (python curtus brongersmai).  Some folks call them Red Bloods but that is fairly redundant since blood is red.

The other members of the blood python family are the Borneo short-tailed python (p. c. breitensteini) and the Sumatran short-tailed python (p. c. curtis).  Borneos tend to be more of a yellow and brown combination and they don't get as large as the Malaysians.  The Sumatrans are very dark colored and are sometimes called Black Bloods.  I love 'em all.

I bought a pair of blood pythons from San Diego Reptile Breeders at the IRBA show in San Diego in July of 2000.  These are a brother and sister that were born in November of 1999.  The male (to the right) has a deeper, red color than the female.  He also has spots/blotches that go all the way down his back.  The female (at the top and below) is more of an orange color and she has more striping to her including a stripe down the last third or so of her back.  I like the splotches more so I picked out the only one that had some the whole length of his body.  The splotches down their spines are beautiful next to the "eyes" running down their sides.

Ever since the day that I bought them the female has had a bit of an attitude problem.  How bad is it?  Well, let's just say that I never worried about getting bitten on a regular basis by any of my pet snakes until I met her.  But, she has gotten much better and I have learned how to approach her by lowering my hand down from above and behind her head.  If I do this slowly and carefully she usually will not strike.  (Of course, I cheat and wear heavy-duty leather gloves when I do this, but it still sounds like I'm taking some risk, doesn't it?  :)  Once I get her out I don't do any fast movement around her.  She just sits and observes.  What a beauty!

The male has been a bit more relaxed but he still has his moments.  When they were about two years old, I moved them into a 36" Vision cage.  They handle being together pretty well.  This is in stark contrast to the first time I put them together.  That was the day that I bought them at the show and they were in the same carrying cage for a while back at the hotel.  The two must have some sort of sibling rivalry-thing going because they both launched into a vicious fight.  It was like watching a pack of wild dogs.  I was afraid to stick my hand into the mass of writhing snakes.

They bred for the first time during the early months of 2003 and the female laid a clutch of 10 eggs.

The big craze now with bloods is the albino blood that some breeders are working with.  And VPI even has an "Ivory" blood.  Tracy Barker is quite the blood python enthusiast so make sure to check out her site for some good information on them (http://www.vpi.com).

Unless otherwise credited, all photographs and text are my property and may not be used without my permission.  World maps courtesy of The General Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin.  I don't claim responsibility for the content of any of the websites that I link to.