The land "down under" is home to many of the world's python species, and there probably isn't a python that is more easily recognized than the jungle carpet python.  Exceptional "jungles" have brilliant yellow bands or patches that contrast with deep, velvety black.  Wrap these colors around a 6 foot long snake and you have one impressive animal!

I don't know when or where I saw my first jungle carpet python but I do remember that I had no idea they even existed back when I was a youngster.  Fortunately, many people recognized them back then because that was back when Australia actually allowed it's reptiles to be exported.  If not for those early snake enthusiasts, a whole continent of fantastic animals would be lost to python keepers.

I currently have a trio of these animals - one male and two females.  The females are pictured on this page.  My largest female is the one over the map of Australia, and again at the bottom of the page.  My other female is one that I bought from Tracy Barker at VPI.  She has a gold stripe running most of the way down her back.  I don't know if this is an inheritable trait or not, but supposedly the Barkers were working on striped jungles at one time.  (I guess if it was inheritable they would have found out and there would be quite a few of them out there!)

Jungle carpets are just one of a great set of cool species in the Morelia family.  The group also includes the Coastal and Queensland carpets, Irian Jaya carpets, Diamond pythons, Centralian pythons, Boelen's pythons, Amethystine pythons and Green Tree pythons.  What a group!!!  You know, if I could only keep snakes from one family of species it would definitely be the Morelias.  (Although, I may leave the Amethystines out.  They can grow into 20' of holy terror...)

These pythons are very easy to take care of and have pretty good temperaments.  I would just suggest that you be especially wary of them when you are feeding them.  They are very aggressive feeders and it can be very nerve rattling to have a 5' jungle lunge for your hand when you're trying to drop a dead rat in front of it.  If you don't own hemostats, get some!

Speaking of feeding these - I know that sometimes people have trouble getting them to eat.  Some jungles are known to not accept rats.  This can be a real pain when you are feeding a 5 or 6' long snake.  (That's a lot of mice!)  Unfortunately my male is like this.  He was eating rats for a while and then somehow he got switched back to mice.  I've tried dunking rats in MouseMaker and chicken broth and this doesn't fool him at all.  I've left rats in a cage full of dirty mice so that they would smell like mice and that doesn't work either.  I've tried feeding a mouse followed quickly by a rat but to no avail.  He is just too smart for this.  Frustrating....

But at least he eats!  My striped female was a yearling when she went off food altogether.  To get her back on I got really creative.  I was reading a book once where the author claimed that jungles should really be classified as "semi-arboreal" snakes since he had always observed them in the trees.  Well that gave me an idea. 

I got a tall Rubbermaid container and cut holes in opposite sides so that I could run a 1" diameter PVC pipe through it.  Then I put the snake in there and sure enough, she crawled up on the perch.  Once she settled down I put a live mouse on the floor of the box and closed the lid.  She sat there like any good predator should and quick as lightning pounced on that mouse!  I was elated. 

She ate like this for well over a year.  She had no problems switching to rats either.  She just wanted to be able to sit comfortably somewhere when she dined.  That's fine with me.  Now she is almost three years old and she eats "normally" again.  She'll take dead rats from hemostats.  Ahhhh..... I like it when my job is easy.

I am not aware of any jungle carpet-specific websites but I am sure that I have seen at least one or two of them out there.  You can follow any general python care guides, though.  There are two good books on pythons that are available:

• "Pythons : Everything About Selection, Care, Nutrition, Diseases, Breeding, and Behavior (Complete Pet Owner's Manual)" by Patricia Pope et al.  This is one of the Barron's books that are available at all good pet stores for about $7.00.
• "Pythons of the World, Volume 1, Australia" by David and Tracy Barker.  You can order it from their website at: http://www.vpi.com/6VPIPrint/PythonsOfTheWorld1/PythonsOfTheWorld1.htm  This is a great book!

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.