Do Snakes Need Mates to Lay an Egg?

Female snakes usually reproduce by breeding with one or more males, who fertilize their eggs. A female will then typically lay her eggs within weeks or months of copulating. This doesn't mean that either mom or dad will stick around to help hatch and rear the young. Only the female may either brood her eggs, staying with them to keep them warm after she lays them if she's oviparous, or the eggs will stay within her body if she's ovoviviparous. Some oviparous snake moms simply abandon their eggs, usually after burying them in a hole. Once the eggs hatch, some mother snakes remain with the babies for a short period of time to protect them.

While traditionally a female snake needs to mate with a male snake to produce fertilized eggs, some -- like the flower pot snake -- produce young by a process called parthenogenesis, also known as asexual reproduction. Flower pot snakes asexually produce identical female offspring who are healthy, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History. In addition, a study published in the September 2012 edition of "Biology Letters" found that cottonmouth and copperhead snakes, pit vipers who normally mate to produce young, were also able to reproduce asexually. Their young all turned out to be male and weren't clones of their mothers, but rather had only half of her DNA and were usually stillborn or deformed. Note that pit vipers are ovoviviparous and carry their eggs within their bodies.

Some snakes lay a clutch of eggs years after being adopted. While the eggs that your snake lays may appear to be produced asexually, the truth may be that she was bred before she came to live with you. Once a snake breeds, she is able to store her suitor's sperm in her body for up to six years in her cloaca, according to ExoticPetVet.com. This sperm remains viable and can fertilize her eggs even years after mating, states "Venomous Snakes." So while Sissy may not have a mate around, she certainly can lay eggs that her body fertilizes with the sperm from an encounter she had with a previous suitor.

In rare cases, a snake may lay a clutch of eggs without mating, which are infertile if she isn't able to fertilize them herself. These eggs are called slugs and won't hatch. Even after mating with a male, a female snake's clutch of eggs may contain a few of these "bad" eggs among the viable ones. Some snakes even give birth to live young without any eggs, much like mammals. These snakes are called viviparous and tend to mate with males to reproduce just as most oviparous or ovoviviparous ones do.