This is a question that surprisingly comes up more frequently than expected, but this is still a topic not often explained in detail.

Snakes poop less frequently than 95% of the population of living creators, this is due to only having a meal which can be months apart from one another.

Since snakes can go sometimes up to a year without 1 meal, this in turn has the same effect on their pooping routine, yes snakes can go a whole year with never needing to go to the toilet.

Snakes poop through their Cloaca, in less technical terms this is the bum, the poo. Since male and female snakes’ sexual organs are internal, the poo and wee comes from the same area.

As snakes digest their food whole, this takes much longer to breakdown with stomach acids.

For larger meals this can take up to a month, a large deer for a extremely large snake such as reticulated pythons, burmese pythons or even African rock pythons.

A snake will only poop when the whole prey item is ready to be desposed of, unlike birds which can take up to 50 poops a day.

Once they have disposed of their wasted a snake will often begin its hunt for its next meal as the body is ready for the next meal cycle.

Just like most other animals snake poop is made up of two parts:

The fecal fragment, this is a scientific name for the poo.

And the uric acid which is the snake’s urine.

So do snakes have tails?

Yes, they have a tail and this is from the point of the cloaca down to the tip of their tails.

Before owning snakes, I always thought that a snake was just a tail with a head!

What does snake poop look like

Snake poop looks similar to dog poop, it is brown but there is some difference. Snake poo can also come out with a piece that is white, this is often the hair of mice in captivity that has been digested also.

It is often much wetter than human faeces, this is because a snake poo and urine come from the same place (the cloaca), so it is common for a snake to release urine and poop at the same time. In addition to this the food they eat is wet and has blood which is digested and comes out the snake at the same time.

How often do snakes poop?

Your content goes here. Edit or remove this text inline or in the module Content settings. You can also style every aspect of this content in the module Design settings and even apply cus

This varies considerably, the size of the snake, the meal size they have eaten and finally the age of the snake.

Firstly, the snake’s size will determine speed due to the volume of stomach acid they have. If a 20ft Anaconda ate a mouse, it is going to not touch the sides and be pooped out in days if even at all.

Snakes do not partially defecate their meals; it all comes out at once which allows them to go back out and hunt lighter.

If a ball python ate a reasonably sized rat, this will take the ball python up to a week to poop or even longer.

Finally, age, when young a baby snake is left to its own devices, this means hunting is genetically wired from the off, a baby will eat more frequently on smaller sized meals and because of their rapid growth rate poop more frequently to repeat the process.

tom CSS to this text in the module Advanced settings.

Do snakes pee?

Yes, they also pee, snakes can just urinate but for the most part they release the pee at the snake time a snake takes a poo. Snakes need to drink water often and if they have not had a meal, the need to urinate will be necessary before.

Snake pee also comes from the cloaca which words a disposal for both the pee and poop of the snake.

Do snakes get constipated

Yes, this can happen to a snake, this can be cause from numerous different reasons. A meal could have been too large and taken too long to digest, this can make the snake poop dry and solidify making it harder for the snake to push the poop out of the cloaca.

In the wild this can actually be fatal if the poop is stuck long enough, it will begin to mould and cause internal infection for the snake.

If you have a pet snake that is constipated, the best solution to this is a Lukewarm bath, yes disgusting but it works every time, this loosens the snake’s cloaca allowing the backed-up faeces to leave. It is also worth noting that it can look like poop is stuck when the snake is egg bound, this means a snake egg is stuck and is too big to be pushed out.

2 Comments

  1. Richard Roe

    This mornings I found a large snake skin with a large amount of what I think is snake poo close to the discarded snake skin,
    we have seen some snakes in the Bushland Estate Noosaville before, but not this large, I have taken a couple of photographs

    Reply
    • Grant

      Hi Richard,

      it is very common for a snake to defecate straight after shedding their skin.

      Reply

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *