A female Burmese Python (Python bivittatus) around her clutch of eggs.
Pythons are among the few snakes that show some sort of maternal interest.
In most spices of snakes, the female snake has live babies or lays her eggs and carries on her life showing no interest in either her eggs or her offspring.
Pythons and a few other snakes are different.
Typically they would lay their eggs in holes under the ground where the temperature is fairly stable.
After a female Python lays her eggs she stays with the eggs until the eggs hatch. She will bask in the sun absorbing heat and then coil around her eggs transferring the heat to the eggs. During cold spells, she will coil around the eggs and shiver, thus generating heat for the eggs.
She has the ability to expel the nest any egg that might start to go off. It is quite incredible to see this. With a flickering of the tongue she will detect a bad egg, then with a twitch of one of her coils she flicks it out the nest!
After the eggs hatch the mother and young stay in the hole together until the babies shed their skin for the first time a few days after hatching. Babies can be found lying on top of their coiled up mother. They then disperse living solitary lives.
One other South African Snake that I have found with her eggs under a rock is the Spotted Skaapsteker also called the Rhombic Skaapsteker (Psammophylax rhombeatus)
