A friend of mine collects large constrictors (several BRBs, green anaconda, a few retics, and breeds RTBs), and just paid a fair amount of money to get most of them micro-chipped. My questions is, can this have negative impacts on the snakes, and how common is this.

Is it common place to get snakes micro-chipped now, and what are the chances a vet would even check a snake for a micro-chip.

I am just curious, I have no intention of getting my corns chipped, but never realized this was even possible.

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TKE:TT:118

With as small as the chips are, properly done it should not cause the snake any problems.
As to whether a vet would check for it depends on how prevalent the procedure becomes.

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We'll microchip anything with a pulse at my work.
I have considered chipping my iguana even.

The "chip" is a cylinder the size of a grain of rice, they are injected under the skin with a very large gauge needle.

It doesn't constantly transmit any signal that could be damaging, it is just activated by the chip reader.

I would be most worried about bleeding from the injection site since reptiles are slow to heal rather than long term effects.

Micro chipping is great as long as someone thinks to scan an animal for a chip, you can't exactly put a tag on a snakes collar like you can with a dog.

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just makes you think of how much easier it would be if we could put a tracking chip in as well... nothing major just something that you could use a small hand held tracker to search short range for the signal, if the animal got out...

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That would be cool, it would make life much easier

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TKE:TT:118

"honey the snakes out!!!!"..
"O ok..beep beep..shes under the sofa." lol

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I would wonder if the chip would be useful depending on who found it.

Found cat = trip to the SPCA or an ad in the paper
Found snake can often = shovel to chop the neck off by someone who is afraid.

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My name is Liz
Do what's best for the animal, not what's best for you.

Too true, Liz. A very sad state of affairs. Perhaps they should have little snake collars, with a phone number on them.

I think it might be helpful if you have rare or expensive reptiles and someone steals them. That's not unheard of. But I'm not sure it would do much for common reptiles.

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