How do you sex a snake?

[Madeline]

Does anybody know how to sex a snake?

 

[Jmadson13]

Theres many ways but only one 100% Get the snake probed. Alot of people will recommend popping the vent to view the snakes genitals but this has a couple of problems: you can hurt the snake especially if small and larger snakes can't readily be popped this way. Other people will eyeball the length of the tail or in the case of boids the size of the spurs but in my opinion this is faulty as well. I've seen many boas and pythons that had large spurs and turned out to be female

 

[dangerprone69]

There's two methods: the first I wouldn't recommend at all, and the second I would recommend to have done by a qualified person.

First is "popping". Basically you open the snake's vent, and if it's a male it's hemipenis will "pop" out. This method is not recommended by most professionals because it can cause sterility, although it is common.

The second is "probing". This is where you would stick a probe, usually made of surgical steel and sterilized, into the snake's vent and depending on how far the probe goes into the vent determines whether it's a boy snake or a girl snake. You must be extremely delicate when doing this.

Try doing a google search, and I would recommend seeking out an experienced snake handler first.

 

[Joe]

Other people will eyeball the length of the tail but in my opinion this is faulty as well.

I know a few people who can sex colubrids visually, and they can do it reliably. It just takes a lot of experience (more than I have). It's like being able to tell whether a far-off person is a male or female by the way they walk. Once you've seen enough of them, you can tell the difference.

 

[reptillian]

u can probe them or the other way is that male snakes have longer tails after the vent and females tails stop just after if u know what i mean.

 

[Beardo]

u can probe them or the other way is that male snakes have longer tails after the vent and females tails stop just after if u know what i mean.

This isn't always accurate...I've seen many female snakes that had very long tails, and many males that had very short tails. Probing is the way to go, and even that isn't always 100% accurate.

 

[Shelob]

I determined the sex of my male python by the probe method, wasn't that difficult, read about it in a ball python book or perhaps on the 'net.

 

[Schlyne]

First is "popping". Basically you open the snake's vent, and if it's a male it's hemipenis will "pop" out. This method is not recommended by most professionals because it can cause sterility, although it is common.

Also, popping may damage the snake's spine, depending on species.

Probing is not something you should undertake without a qualified person to teach you. If you push the probe too deep, you can render the snake unable to breed. If you are probing, make sure you know how deep the probes should go for that species of snake. Different species probe at different levels.