Welcome back to Animal Wonders.  Today, we're going to do a little hangout session with Daisy the boa constrictor.  I love spending one on one time with the animals and really giving them everything that they need, and one of the things that Daisy needs is to get out and stretch and explore, so let's get right to it. 

(Intro)

Hi, I'm just letting her know that I'm here.  I don't want to go right in and start trying to pick her up, it might spook her and she might feel like she has to defend herself.  Come on over and I want to lift her up from, oof, her--where her chest would be first and then the back half.  Alright.  Good girl, Daisy.  I know, I took you off of your branches.  Let's go and explore.  I promise you're gonna have lots of fun.

Alright, here we are, Daisy.  Would you like to hang out on the ground?  There you go.  Good girl.  Look at that.  Oh man, she's beautiful.  It's about 65 degrees out, but it feels really warm in the Sun.  It's one of the things I love about Montana is that the air is just clear and so it feels really warm when you're in the Sun.  It looks like she's doing nothing, but she has all these muscles are working right now.  Right now, she's using her muscles right there and right here, wherever she makes that little kink in her body is where she's either pulling with her muscles, pulling her, the rest of her body forward, or pushing her body from back, so she's constantly pushing or pulling part of her body.  

Along her body, this pattern here, she has these white spots down here and those are basically fake eyespots so that she can defend herself against predators.  It looks like there's two eyes staring at them so they don't want to mess with something that's staring right at them, especially if it's a snake this large, so those fake eyespots are going to protect her against a predator that might want to eat her.  It's really helpful when she's young.  At this age, she's about 12, there's not going to be many things that can actually prey upon her, so once she gets really big, she's fairly safe.

She's made her way--ooh, I do not want her going underneath--underneath there.  I think we're alright.  She hasn't tried to go underneath, but I do not want her going under the walkway in case she decides to roll up underneath there.  So, head back this direction toward the trees pretty girl.  She doesn't want to, she's like, nope, I found my space over there.  I'm going to go ahead and pick her up and move her back toward the trees over here to safety.

So I have to pay attention to her behavior.  Maybe she was going over there to try and get into the shade so she could regulate her temperature, which is one of the reasons I brought her back to under these trees, 'cause there's a little bit of shade here.  I wanna make sure she doesn't get too hot.  I love what she's doing right now.  Her head is up, she's looking around, checking out her surroundings.  Every once in a while, she tongue-flicks and smells the air a bit.  

Snakes do most of their investigating of the world through their sense of smell, so they stick their tongue out and they gather in all the little scent particles that are in the air.  They bring it back into their mouth and they rub their tongue on the roof of their mouth, where there's a Jacobson's organ, and there's two sides to the Jacobson's organ so each side of their forked tongue goes to each side of the Jacobson's organ, and it kinda tells them what direction a smell is coming from. 

On the opposite side of senses, their hearing is not very good.  They can hear but it's mostly through vibrations and they lay their head on the ground and it kind of goes through their jawbone and up into where their ears are.  They have very different structures inside their ears, so they don't really have an eardrum like we do, so their hearing is poor, but their sense of smell is excellent, and then their eyesight is kind of in between that.

They're not really good at seeing distances.  They're mostly adapted to being able to see close up movement to catch their prey.

Well, Daisy has had a great time exploring.  She's going into the shade now, so I am thinking she's getting a little too hot out here.  We're gonna go ahead and bring her back to her enclosure and say goodbye.

Alright, pretty girl, that was fun, wasn't it?  Let's get you back home.  Go on up there.  One thing that we did for Daisy that I'm really proud of is we gave her a much larger space.  So, a lot of people will keep their large snakes in too small of enclosures and I just don't think that's right, so we gave her a much larger space to move around in.  My favorite part of this is her climbing branches.  

Now, we could improve her habitat even more than it is right now.  This could be ten times bigger, and that would be amazing for her, but for now, this enclosure is a big enough improvement that I'm happy with her well-being.  She has plenty of branches to climb around on, so she can stay active and healthy, and then of course, we get her outside so she can exercise and stretch and explore and just have a much better quality of life.

Thank you for watching this hangout with me and Daisy.  I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did and if you would like to go on some more animal adventures with me, subscribe and I'll see you soon. 

(Endscreen/Credits)