Parental care in snakes usually stops at hatching, and in most species stops well before. Python sebae goes further. Females brood the clutch by coiling around it through an incubation of two to three months, and a study of wild pythons in a South African reserve documented mothers staying with the hatchlings in the nest burrow for roughly a fortnight after emergence.
The observed behaviour included the female positioning herself around the young at night and the young sheltering beneath and among her coils by day, with the mother apparently responding when they strayed. The cost is high: brooding females fast throughout, and the study reported that they lost a substantial share of body mass and were slow to recover, with reproduction typically not annual.
The species pays a further cost from people. It is hunted for skin, meat and traditional medicine, and it is killed near settlements, which has led to a Near Threatened assessment despite a very large range. Care of this kind is easily undercounted, because it happens inside burrows and termite mounds where it is difficult to observe.