I was asked to comment on this so I’m dusting my sad rarely-updated snake blog off to discuss more examples.
The biggest thing to keep in mind is also that “wild snake” does not necessarily mean “healthy snake”. Additionally, while a few tells work for specific species, there is no one tell besides “this snake is clearly way too fat because it looks like its melting into the floor” body condition that works for all snakes.
I’m also agreeing with the sentiment that most often, snakes that are too fat in captivity are too fat predominantly because of overfeeding. Not necessarily powerfeeding- ime I can usually tell when a snake has been powerfed vs just too much food in general, and most fat snakes you see in captivity are just overfed to the point of obesity. I was explaining this to the person who asked me about it off tumblr, but basically- the majority of snakes are designed to be ambush predators that don’t have a very high success rate, and even when they do succeed if something bothers them too much before they’re done digesting then they regurgitate and get very little nutrition for all that work.
As a result, you get some pretty wild stuff like when my ball python Q decided to go off feed for 9 months because for whatever reason he doesn’t like rats anymore despite eating rats for three years straight and it took me that long to think maybe I should try offering a mouse instead. He was just under 2000 grams at the time. He lost about 20 grams. A weight loss of only 0.01% after 9 months of zero nutritional intake is pretty amazing stuff and it wouldn’t be possible if a snake’s metabolism was actually meant to be consuming big prey items on a weekly basis at all times. For those interested, Q is now nearly 7 and has been on a steady diet of 2-3 jumbo mice once every 2-3 weeks and is eating like a charm. I had him on a weekly basis, but he was getting quite fat, so I delayed feedings to slim him down.
Another problem isn’t necessarily small enclosures but bare enclosures. I don’t think keeping an adult ball python in a shoebox is really a good way to go, but I also don’t think keeping an adult ball python in a huge cage with literally nothing to do except go from hide to hide or sit in the water bowl is really that much better for your animal. Enrichment matters! The complaint of too little muscle tone is easy to fix if proper enrichment options were made available.
Anyway- a few things before I toss some more example photos in here. Indigos do have a pouch under their chin, even wild indigos have one, so that’s not so much a tell of obesity as it is just part of the snake.
[https://srelherp.uga.edu/]
This is a wild indigo. It still has a “double chin”. They do that. It’s supposed to be there. The example snake is a bit chunky, but the flap under the chin is not caused by fatty deposits.
Similarly, the corn snake honestly has a bigger problem with “too little muscle tone” rather than “too much fat”, and could likely be kept on the same feeding schedule if more enrichment was provided.
Speaking of, you can’t always rely on healthy-appearing wild snakes to not be fat. This burmese was, supposedly, found in the Everglades by a ranger. It’s starting to get pretty fat. Clearly this fella’s had no issues finding food and a safe place to hide, but also this is not the weight or shape of a healthy burm.
[https://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/news/state–regional/cerabino-burmese-python-hunt-florida-fit/gyl4PB95OVorFSxiZTrgeI/]
This is also supposedly a feral burm found in the Everglades, and this one is not fat. So be careful basing your ideal weights on what’s found without human help. I’ve seen plenty of fat wild animals running around to know that an animal gets fat from eating too much, and they’re going to get that way with or without our help.
Anyway. I tend to divide snakes into three body-shape categories. Flat-sided (or thin-bodied), cylindrical, and thick-bodied. A good visual for these three categories would be amazon tree boas, bci and bcc, and short-tailed pythons.
[http://franclycac.com/wordpress1/]
Amazon tree boas, like most tree snakes, are thin bodied and flat-sided. A lot of people jokingly refer to them as angry shoelaces and it’s not hard to see why. These two are actually a perfect weight for their species, but would be deemed “too thin” by most people trying to go off of what’s available in this post.
This is a baby boa constrictor eating its first meal. It’s too young to ever have built up any fatty deposits, yet its spine is still slightly recessed in this photo. That’s because boas like this one are built like a rectangular tube rather than like a triangle or a shoelace. You should never see spine with snakes built like this as it means they are becoming very underweight. Similarly, the above burms are also rectangular tubes, rather than triangles or shoelaces, so the same applies to them.
This is also a young boa, but you can still see how the spine is not supposed to stick out of the body and how the body is much more of a square than anything else. This is a good body weight for this snake.
Comparatively, this is an adult STP that is a nice weight. These are thick-bodied snakes, like a curvy triangle, and should look about like this. Notice how different this snake looks compared to the other two body types. Ball pythons are also thick-bodied snakes, but they’re a significantly less dramatic example of that type.
I’m realizing that all of my examples have been boids and pythons and it’s not that big a surprise that those are the species I tend to prefer over vipers or colubrids or other types of snakes, but still. It’s a good idea to learn what your individual species is supposed to look like, and what body type they have, because trying to compare these three body types can be detrimental if you’re expecting an amazon to look like a blood or a burm to look like a ball.
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