Ya know I’m curious, as a child my grandfather, who frankly lives snakes and all such scaled creatures, always, ALWAYS, said to me “son, reptiles only care about three things, food, sleep, and temperature” which logically I suppose is true, but he meant that, in that they don’t show affection, dont have emotion, don’t love the person caring for them. Never stopped him from giving snakes kisses on the head and taking well care of them, just an interesting thing to say I suppose. I flip flop on my opinion. What do you think? Do they feel things like love, like a more common pet may
How reptiles bond/if they form bonds is has been debated a lot, theres much more eloquent and well referenced posts and articles about it out there if you’re interested.
Personally I think it probably varies by species quite a lot, there’s probably a big difference between monkey tailed skinks that live in groups and, say, a cornsnake.
I don’t think any of my snakes or my gecko are really “bonded” to me in any way, I’ve never seen anything from them that I would intemperate as affection. People do tend to anthropomorphize their pets quite a lot but that doesn’t mean their ball python actually approaches the front of the tank when they walk in the room for any reason other than expecting food.
I do think that reptiles are more complex cognitively than many people give them credit for (they probably care about/need more than those three things) but I don’t feel qualified to say to what extent. Our understanding of what they feel has come a long way (not so long ago we didn’t give reptiles pain medication because it was thought they didn’t feel pain, this was also true for dogs and cats at one point though) and I think it will continue to improve in the future.
