219 Ball Pythons Care About Friendship

Our understanding of the social lives of snakes is evolving at breakneck speed. This week we discuss a new study which has revealed that ball pythons have social behaviour. We also talk about sociality in rattlesnakes, before moving on to some news from the world of milk snake speciation - there may be fewer species than previously thought. Become a Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/herphighlights Merch: https://www.redbubble.com/people/herphighlights/shop Full reference list available here: http://www.herphighlights.podbean.com Main Paper References: Clark RW, Brown WS, Stechert R, Greene HW. 2012. Cryptic sociality in rattlesnakes (Crotalus horridus) detected by kinship analysis. Biology Letters 8:523–525. DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2011.1217. Skinner M, Kumpan T, Miller N. 2024. Intense sociability in a “non-social” snake (Python regius). Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 78:113. DOI: 10.1007/s00265-024-03535-7. Other Mentioned Papers/Studies: Kornai D, Jiao X, Ji J, Flouri T, Yang Z. 2024. Hierarchical Heuristic Species Delimitation Under the Multispecies Coalescent Model with Migration. Systematic Biology 73:1015–1037. DOI: 10.1093/sysbio/syae050. Other Links/Mentions: Salamander call and video by Heidi Rockney and Gary Nafis from: https://amphibiaweb.org/cgi/amphib_query?where-genus=Dicamptodon&where-species=ensatus  Editing and Music: Intro/outro – Treehouse by Ed Nelson Species Bi-week theme – Michael Timothy Other Music – The Passion HiFi, https://www.thepassionhifi.com Intro visuals – Paul Snelling