What Is Your Favorite Reptile?

[mjfillen]

What is your favorite reptile? I mean it to be literal, but you can be figurative if you want.

My favorite is a Western Hognose Snake (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_hognose_snake) because they are very small, very docile as a pet, put on a bluff show, and are intelligent and curious enough to act like a toddler (mine anyway). I have had one for a year and it is less than a foot long. It started out too small to eat a whole pinkie mouse, so I fed it parts of one. Now I feed it pieces of rat tail (a very unusual thing to feed anything) and very occasionally a pinky mouse. If you can imagine a snake being cute, then that is what western hognose snakes are.

I also have a HUGE (about as long as your mother is tall, and about as fat as your wrist) Bullsnake (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullsnake) that is a nonvenomous rattlesnake mimic. It gets angry, hisses very loudly, curls back, vibrates its tail against the ground or anything else, and strikes at you (with a closed mouth, its all bluff). It is VERY impressive in its attempt to get you to just leave it alone, and is probably what most gets killed by people who think they are seeing a rattlesnake, when it is actually harmless. It is so impressive that it even scares me and I am not afraid of snakes and _know_ it cannot hurt me!

But my two snakes are like polar opposites in their behavior, even though they both generally have the same pattern. The Western Hognose Snake is much more docile, so it is my favorite reptile.

[mjfillen]

If you prefer lizards, I have never had one but Jackson's Chameleons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson%27s_chameleon) would be my favorite because they have three horns like a Triceratops.
If you prefer turtles, a Yangtze Giant Softshell Turtle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangtze_giant_softshell_turtle) would be good because there is exactly ONE PAIR left in the entire world. There is one (questionable) male in the wild in a lake in Vietnam, and one male and one female in a zoo in China which have had zero viable eggs because the male is 100 years old and the female is 80. Even artificial insemination has not resulted in fertile eggs. A fourth (male) turtle died in January 2016.
Tuataras (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuatara) would be a favorite because they are the last of their kind of reptile and have a "third eye". They look like lizards but aren't. There is one male in captivity named Henry that is still sexually active at almost 120 years old.
And if you prefer crocodilians, then I think Gharials look interesting and they only eat fish.

[linny]

I have a red-eared slider water turtle, so I pick her as my favorite reptile. She is a rescue turtle and about 7 years old. When I got her, she was named "Turtle". Unfortunately, last December (2015) at a family gathering my family named her "Soup" and it sort of stuck. Sometimes I think I enjoy my time with Soup more than my time with family...they are a bunch of nuts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-eared_slider

[SonOfTheExiles]

http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/science-environment/2012/07/australias-10-most-dangerous-snakes/

None of the above.


SOTE

[chocoholic]

If I were going to have one, I'd probably have a corn snake because they're so pretty and not hard to take care of. Or a ball python because they are just cool (though I'd rather feed a little snake than a big one). Back in school, my roommate and I had a rat snake, and it was frankly a pretty boring pet (other than us being able to tell people we had a snake) until it developed heart disease. That was a good learning experience for us though unfortunate for our snake. I've joked about getting a snake for the kids but they haven't taken me up on it. It probably wouldn't be the best idea anyway (for the snake -- we have dogs who would be VERY interested).

My favorite reptiles right now are probably the little lizards that sometimes run along the top of our fence. Fun to watch out the window. I don't know what they are.

[Twinkle88]

Turtle! (I won't be specific about which kind. ) But your Western Hodnose snake does sound very cute.

[mjfillen]

This is not my Western Hognose Snake (none of these videos are) but it shows how small they are and especially how silly they are! It made me laugh SO hard before I got mine! It is a tiny snake trying to eat half a hardboiled egg:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF5xt_V4Ge4
And just so you know it is not only that one that is silly, here is another one (still not mine) who is eating scrambled eggs!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kHKY6EzEkY
Here is one acting all big and tough:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBp41VihVsE
And here is one that decided someone's pants were food!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijf-zajzwUQ

And I once was in a park and saw a light-colored wild _Eastern_ Hognose Snake (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_hognose_snake) which are famous for trying to get you to leave them alone by first flattening to look like a cobra (which aren't even on the same continent or hemisphere!) and if that doesn't do it then they open their mouth, stick their tongue out of the side of their mouth, roll over, and pretend to be dead. The one I saw was VERY impressive! The only eat amphibians, not even other reptiles. But I went back later and some idiot had chopped it in half! I was so mad...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuZtKVM6koo

[MaryinArkansas]

I'm not a reptile fan, but have always kind of liked the little, green grass snakes. Of the other types of snakes, one of the most interesting I've seen is the coachwhip. It really did look like a braided whip. Neat looking snake. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masticophis_flagellum

[mjfillen]

Those little green, grass snakes do look interesting, I saw one in Florida once. They are beautiful and are very gentle. I think I read they are hard to keep alive, but the book I read that in was probably from the 60's so its probably easier now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIdpBjcwoqo
I saw a Coachwhip Snake being sold at a pet expo. It was incredibly long and thin. I read somewhere that they stay wild even as pets. I would like to have one anyway! A Red Coachwhip Snake (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F55o6jwANDQ) even sounds interesting.

Speaking of snakes looking like whips:

Snake (by Emily Dickinson)

A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him, -did you not?
His notice sudden is.

The grass divides as with a comb,
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun, -
When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.

Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;

But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.

[VfkaBT]

I have a lot of lizards in my yard, so lizards. There's a black one with a red throat pouch he puffs up at competitors, and a grayish-green one with a black racing stripe down the length of its body. The leaf-green ones are rarer, possibly because of the black snakes who occasionally come out of the brush to sun themselves.

[Icaruslanding]

Bearded Dragon - Ex wife and I used to have one. Incredible personality, and while they're the 'go to' reptile for many, I just can't get enough of the little guys