Hi, I'm playing a cleric of Hanspur in the Second Darkness campaign and roll a lot of animal based necromancy on him as he makes contracts with the thing he kills and considers the contract void if the creature could have contemplated the terms in the first place. Also my DM runs it so that while necromancy is frowned upon I get a lot less hate from the church of Pharasma is I keep it to animals.
Anyway so far I have two bloody skeletons under my control at the moment, the first is a constrictor snake and the other is a pet dog called peaches that the paladin paid me to reanimate (as all his dogs keep dying). Now when reading the animate dead spell it said a creature brought back as a skeleton looses all special attacks which would include the snakes constrict attack. However I didn't see anything, or at least am unsure if animating a creature loses attack based special qualities like grab on the snake or trip on the riding dog.
Here's the snake before it became a skeleton: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/animals/snake/snake-const rictor-anaconda
Does anyone know if they keep these attacks or not? It would help quite a bit if they did since my snake takes on single targets most of the time. Also while I'm here I might as well ask is there any set rules for uncontrolled undead if you go over your HD limit on the spell?