Snakes: Curiosities and Wonders of Serpent Life

by Catherine Cooper Hopley

Thus was this important question settled, and the hatching of the young brood in Paris became a chronological era in ophidian annals.

When therefore, in January 1862, twenty-one years afterwards, a python seba in our own Gardens laid upwards of a hundred eggs, immense interest and curiosity were excited among the zoologists of the day, for here at home in London was a grand opportunity for observing the one only snake which at that time was supposed to exhibit any sort of maternal instinct. Plenty of damp moss had been supplied to her, the temperature maintained in the cage being supposed sufficient for her well-being. She pushed the moss into a kind of nest, and when the ‘long string of eggs’ were deposited, she arranged them in a nearly level mass, and then coiled herself over and around them so as to hide and cover them as much as possible. Sometimes she changed her position a little, and re-arranged her eggs, and in various ways rendered herself worthy of record.

Ophiologists had scientific facts to verify: this opportunity must not be neglected for ascertaining whether so cold a nature, and in midwinter, could produce sufficient warmth by lying there day after day upon her bushel of eggs. So thermometers were ever and anon thrust between her coils, or held close to her; first here, then there, after the example of M. Dumeril in Paris. Other disturbances in the way of cleaning out the cage and supplying her companion in captivity with food and water were angrily resented by the poor patient, who had no chance of the tranquillity that she would have sought for herself in her native tropics. Besides which, the chances against hatching were far greater in her case than in the Paris and Amsterdam pythons. The former saved only eight out of her fifteen, and here we had, in round numbers, one hundred, more than she could successfully cover at one time. Moreover, a most untoward accident happened one night by the tank overflowing among her eggs, necessitating a complete disturbance of them. What wonder, then, that she was irritable and even savage during the whole time of her incubation! One egg, examined fifteen days after it was laid, contained a living embryo, so there were hopes of some at least maturing. For more than seven weeks she remained patiently brooding, when all hope of hatching any of the eggs had vanished, and it became necessary to take them from her. This was done by degrees, and the task was no easy one. The keeper watched his opportunity to raise the sliding door at the back of the cage, make a snatch at those nearest him, and shut down the slide with celerity, or the exasperated mother would have seized him. He nearly got his arm broken more than once by the despatch he was compelled to use. Sometimes, so quick was she, that in thrusting down the slide she was nearly jammed by it. Holland protected himself by holding up a corner of the rug so as to hide himself when he had occasion to open the slide door; yet one day she ‘jumped’ at him, seizing the rug, and with a toss of her head jerking it back with such violence that a shower of the gravel came hailing upon the glass in front of the cage, to the consternation and alarm of the spectators gathered there, and who at the moment imagined the glass was broken, and that the infuriated reptile would be among them. But they were behind her; it was only towards the keeper that her fury was directed: he had taken away the last of her eggs. When, then, he shut down the slide, she kept her angry eyes fixed upon it for a long while. Presently she sought in her empty nest, upon which, so long as any eggs had remained to her, she had re-settled herself after each irruption. At last she took to her bath, in which she remained for a long while.

After the scenes witnessed during those seven weeks, no one could doubt the existence of maternal affection; and this was worth proving, as some authors would have persuaded us that snakes, and particularly the non-venomous ones, manifest total indifference regarding their eggs. The other important fact, an increased temperature, was also again observable, proving that a serpent can really hatch her eggs by the warmth of her own body.

Last summer, 1881, another python laid about twenty eggs at the London Ophidarium, but, alas! neither were any of that brood hatched. For future broods, now that the fact of a raised temperature has been proved, the next scientific triumph will be to develop the young ones, dispensing with thermometers, and substituting perfect tranquillity, with every possible aid and comfort to the mother.

That snakes under these peculiar circumstances do appreciate little ‘delicate attentions,’ ample proof has been afforded in the Jamaica ‘yellow boa’ (Chilobothrus inornatus), the species which on several occasions has produced broods in London, and the one in which Mr. P. H. Gosse verified the marvellous instinct of withholding its eggs when circumstances were not propitious for their deposition. This is one of the ‘Colubri’ alluded to by T. Rymer Jones, ‘which may at pleasure be rendered’ (i.e. render themselves) ‘viviparous by retarding their laying.’

But when Gosse published his work on Jamaica (1851), he did not appear to be aware of what Jones and Cuvier had said on this subject, but stated the result of his own observations. He had become convinced that this species of snake forms a sort of nest, and incubates its eggs; when subsequently, one that he had in captivity produced living young, he was staggered. ‘Is it possible,’ he wrote, ‘that a serpent normally oviparous, might retain the eggs within the oviduct until the birth of her young, when circumstances were not propitious?’

‘Is it possible,’ again asks an American naturalist, so lately as 1879,—‘can it be true that Heterodon platyrhinos and Tropidonotus sipedon’ (both harmless) ‘are sometimes viviparous and sometimes ovoviviparous?’ This writer, F. W. Cragin, had been told that the two above species were ovoviviparous (a word of no value as a definition), and he writes in the American Naturalist, vol. xiii. p. 710, that out of twenty-two eggs of Heterodon, ploughed up out of the sand in Long Island, one he put into alcohol to preserve it as found, and the others were hatched on the fourth day, showing that sometimes at least it is oviparous, as supposed are some of the Eutænias.

Mr. Gosse describes one Jamaica boa in confinement, that was ill and inactive, refusing food. It was unusually vicious, and bit hard enough to draw blood, the effect of the fine teeth being like a severe cat-scratch. It rendered itself further offensive when disturbed, by emitting an insufferable odour, and at length gave birth to living young.