Live food vs. tameness in snakes

This was a question that came up the other night while chatting with some herp buddies of mine.
I wanted to know what others thoughts were on this subject:
The tameness of a snake, say a Burmese or Retic that was feed dead food vs. an animal that was allowed to catch, constrict and kill it's prey. My stand is, that said snake would be as tame as a animal that has only ate dead and never had the oppuntiy to kill is't prey vs. an animal that gets to kill it's dinner and still let's it's owner hold and work with it.
What are everyone's elses thoughts on this subject?

While it is very difficult to generate complete support for most blanket statements, it is my opinion that in general the type of prey offered in this respect has much less to do with temperment than a certain keepers methods of maintaining the animal, namely the degree of interaction between the keeper and the kept.

Many people make the assumption that a snake who is required to kill it's prey, will in turn demonstrate more agressive behavior in non feeding situations. I fail to see the logic in this line of thought.
Most any snake keeper who is only minimally observant has noticed a snake going into "feeding mode" so to speak, when the scent of prey is introduced. Breathing patterns change, the level of alertness is raised, tongue flicking increases, they begin to hunt. These signs are the precursors to a strike sequence.
The important point here is that this is leading to a feeding strike, which is completely different to a strike in self defense.

Whether the snake is fed live or dead prey, the same signs can be observed. While live prey may result in a more agressive feeding response, that is not necessarily carried over to non-feeding situations, because the stimuli are seperate.
It is also noted that in my experience at least, the majority of adults of constricting species continue to constrict the prey regardless of whether it's alive or dead.

The reasons for the bite dictate how the strike progresses. In some cases it may seem to us that some snakes bite without provocation. I disagree with this idea. It is merely our inability to recognize the reason for the bite that causes us to see it as being without cause.
Since feeding strikes and defensive strikes are the results of different stimuli, and are carried out in completely different manners, I find it highly doubtful that factors influencing one would have any effect on the other.
A feeding strike, with constrictors is a bite and hold manuever while a defensive strike is bite and release.

It has been hypothesized that once a feeding strike has been initiated that some form of instinctual process is started, and cannot be aborted until certain parts of the process are complete.
If you have been constricted in a feeding strike by a python you likely see the reasoning for this idea.
With the feeding and defensive strikes apparently being results of independant neurological processes, that which stimulates a feeding strike will not apply during a defensive strike.

Agressiveness is normally perceived by the willingness to bite, and could be considered to be the opposite of tameness. However, many people confuse defense and agression. The difference lies in the action of the snake after the bite. Agression would mean the snake continued to attack the offender even while it was retreating. Mambas are known for this behavior. Defense would result in the snake recoiling after a strike and adopting a wait and see posture. Should the offender withdraw, the defense was a sucess and no further action would be necessary. The majority of snakes afall under this catagory. Understanding these differences is key to making a determination as to whether live prey has an effect on the level of agression displayed by the snake.
The striking and constricting of prey has nothing to do with agression or defense. If a snake is exhibiting a high willingness to bite, but the bites are defensive in nature, they cannot be associated with the feeding of live prey.
Only if the snake, when fed live prey, shows an increase in actual agressive behavior could any association be made.

I've never seen any correlation, but I'm comparing different species. I have a very sweet rainbow boa who's never eaten anything but live, not that we haven't tried. I think it's true what you said, her feeding response is very vicious, but she doesn't carry it over to humans. In fact, I can pick her up when she's done eating without worrying about her going after my hand. I have sand boas who eat frozen thawed that fail to make that distinction.
To prove the hypothesis one way or the other you'd need a controlled study with a large group of snakes from the first time they fed, and that would be kind of tough. You'd have to handle them all the same way and everything. To me it seems that snakes have sort of an inborn temperment that can be modified to a degree by interaction, but that's just anecdotal.

Erin B.

My personal thoughts on this matter are as follows...

Reptile behavior is 100% instinctual, the brain formation and memory function doesn't really allow for cogitation as we understand it, responses are inherently hardwired in genetically.

There is some amount of genetic drift within virtually every species that allows for some deviation in behavioral tendencies.

There are innumerable factors in every stimulus that make it difficult to truely exactly replicate the conditions any other reptile is being kept in or exposed to.

When confronted with a stimulus for which there really is no instinct (very rare), there will be an unpredictable response.

Minor modification of instinct (more appropriately addendum to instinct) takes a great deal of repeated application of stimulus with an identical response.

Feeding live food versus prekilled isn't likely to have an effect on the general behaviors of most snakes, about as far as you'll usually get is a possible loss of envenomation or constriction in species where those behaviors are applicable, and even those losses are very rare. Some of the more subtle differences in response to live versus prekilled when looking solely at the feeding response may play a bit of a role however.

Some verifiable modifications of instinct that have been known to occur... The addition of additional triggers for instinctive responses, much like Pavlov's dogs salivated when they heard bells, moving a snake into a feeding enclosure can trigger those feed strikes with greater frequency, I have seen breeding stock that tends to "strike first, ask questions later" every time the enclosure was opened and the like... But this should not be confused with an entirely new behavior. There is a minimal capability for learning (not a term I like in this case but it'll do) when a certain response to a stimulus has identical results every time. For instance... anything that smells like a mouse is food, which can result in bitten fingers... There is an ability to reccognize pattens that are applied many times, this is a helpful survival ability, reccognition of predators, reccognition of prey, reccognition of good places to locate prey and so on. If there is a stimulus that is constantly associated with one of those basic instincts, the reaction can often end up attributed to the semi-related activity.

While most of that doesn't seem to address the issue of live versus frozen food, it does give a bit of an explination for behavior in general, so it addresses the aggression aspects of it.

My simple answer though would be "No, live versus frozen food has little or no impact on the behavioral tendencies of snakes, the behavior is the result of genetics and can't be altered in that fashion."