Rocky's radiographs

This is my ball Rocky Dennis. She has a funky neck, you can feel some spinal kink issues. Breeder advised she was born like this. She doesn't have any issues shedding or feeding. I wanted to see what was going on in there so off to the vet we go!


Vet took some x-rays which were really interesting looking and figured I would share.

Here are the two x-rays!

Wow, that is crazy

I feel as if this were a human, they would be in increasing amounts of pain as they aged. Unfortunately testing that in non-human animals is tough, and it's definitely a judgement call. I know you're not asking for advice, but personally I'd euthanize it.

Speaking as someone who cracked my L1 vertebra 20 years ago... that looks painful.

She was born like this, it's not an injury. She doesn't show any signs of being in pain and the vet said she's fine.

Originally Posted by AbsoluteApril

She was born like this, it's not an injury. She doesn't show any signs of being in pain and the vet said she's fine.

Good point, as picky as BP's are, if yours were in pain it likely wouldn't eat. Goodness knows when my back was jacked up, eating was one of the last things on my mind.

For what it's worth, I've handled hundreds of snakes that have just been run over on the road, and with the exception of about a dozen that are seared in my mind, none have shown signs of pain, even when the organs are trailing behind the animal. Snakes are good at hiding it.

A human with that many fused, ill fitting deformed vertebrae would certainly be in chronic pain. Humans are bipedal though, so it may be different. Hard to say really. I guess I'm not attached to the animal at all so the decision for me would be easy. Definitely keep a close eye out for problems - anything really, since the compression point for the spinal nerves is so high. Regardless, good luck with him!

A snake spine isn't under the same kind of stresses as a biped's spine. I'm sure she wouldn't feed and thrive if this was very painful.

It's wild to see, thanks for sharing!

I wonder what the X-ray would look like of a kinked caramel albino!