Sudden death..

Well.. ive just gone to Fluffy, my Royal Python's cage to get him out for the handling I do most nights, and to see why he hadnt eaten.. and he was dead, i have no idea what happened to him, he has been eating fine, and is only a few years old.. he was active today, yesterday and last night, i fed him earlier and noticed he hadnt eaten yet, so i checked him and he didnt move, poor chap i have no idea why this has happened, he has been fine, active and eating




He last ate last thursday, and had a shed about 3 weeks ago, he was just under 3 years old, and handled regularly, i hadnt noticed anything abnormal about his behaviour and i last handled him two days ago.
Can anybody think of a reason why this has happened?

Hi Mark,

What an awful thing to happen, the thing we all dread.
The best thing you can do it take the body straight to a vet for a necropsy so that the cause can be found, and hopefully avoided in future (plus you'll feel a bit better once you know why it happened).

Sympathies,
Helen

How was he kept? What were the Temps for the "hot" and "cool" sides? Did you use a UTH? Was there a hide box, and how big was his enclosure? What and how often were you feeding?

temps were 82 ambient, 90 hot, no UTH, used ceramic heater with a guard and a fluorescent, there was a hide box and the viv was levelled, with a cave kinda thing under the hot spot, enclosure was 4x2x2. i was feeding mice once a week.

these are a couple of pictures of the viv, i used to have a beardie, but she passed a few years ago, a couple of months before i got the snake. she was a rescue from the school, and was an old girl..

the substrate was bark chips as you can see in the second picture, and the water bowl and decorations were different..




the hide box was one of those mock half log things with the sliding top.

In the pics he seems kinda small for a 3 year old. How big was the mouse you were feeding?

those were old pics, havnt really got any recent pics.. the second pic is from:

2008:07:12 19:43:07

and the first one is even older.. i broke my camera, and only had the phone to take pics with, and hadnt really got round to taking pics recently..

the mouse was quite big, with full fur (sorry not sure what the proper name is) ive still got one in the freezer, so i can take a picture on my phone tomorrow if you like?

Just had an interesting point made on another forum..

At the moment I have that swine flu thing, now, i havnt handled him much since i got it, but we are in the same house.. so is it possible that could have affected him? he was active yesterday and overnight, and again during the day, just suddenly passed away.. could that have anything to do with it?

I highly doubt a mammalian virus would pass over to a reptile. I'm no expert, but I'd not think it was an issue.

yeah, it is a long shot, but was just wondering.. how much would they charge for the necropsy? and also.. i cant really go anywhere until next week (probably tusday earliest), so im not really sure what to do with him..

That's too long to wait for a necropsy and most vets won't necropsy a frozen carcass. You should refrigerate him and drop him off somewhere asap if possible. Call around and see if someone will let you do that. If you wait, it's hard to tell some abnormalities apart from post mortem changes. There are so many possibilities, these guys sometimes just don't show us that they are sick until it's too late. Sorry