'pet' retics The relative merits of keeping a retic outside of a zoo are hotly debated as with any number of giant snakes.
A blanket statement that the 'best' pet for a first snake is specifically and always a Ball Python is a gross oversimplification. Individual snakes have individual temperaments. Ball pythons may well not be suitable for some people. Personally, I'd recommend a Columbian Red-Tailed Boa over a Ball Python due to a more 'cuddly' and affectionate temperament, though they get much larger and cost more to feed. Burmese pythons are very popular, though this is partly due to a misconception that they are the mildest-mannered of pythons -- something that if often true but untrue often enough to lead to the occassional disaster. Blood pythons are also sometimes kept for their temperament, though this widly fluctuates from blood python to blood python, and the most common reason for keeping a blood is the pretty ankh on the forehead.
However, there are also plenty of non-python, non-boids that would also make suitable pets. Western Hog-nosed snakes in particular often have mild dispositions when socialised, and as to the 'brag' factor, a hog-nosed owner can honestly state that they own a venomous snake (though the venom only has a mild anaesthetic effect and is injected by back-facing fangs inside the throat, which means one would have to shove a finger down its throat in order to get a numb finger). King snakes and black racers (both colubrids) have also been often found as good starter ophidians.
If more detailed advice as to the keeping of a retic as a pet or not is to be given, it might be pointed out both that retics who have grown over a certain size should certainly never be kept without special facilities (however a four-foot adolescent is no different than any other mean-tempered, moody snake -- many ball pythons come to mind), and that there is a smaller option, the Dwarf Retic, which has not been seen to ever get large enough to swallow its owner, unlike a egular retic. : 66.199.69.117
Herpetoculture vs. Herpetology
A number on interesting things have been done with reticulated pythons over the past couple of 10 years in the field of herpetoculture . A variety of new strains have developed through the selective breeding efforts of private breeders producing snakes for the pet trade.
It is unfortunate, however, that this article has more information about keeping reticulated pythons in captivity rather than it does about the animal in the wild. --Bezbaq 01:49, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)