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Female Viper Fight
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by Snake17 on January 7, 2005
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I knew that male vipers battle it out for females in spring but I had no ideea that females aslo fight. Today, I threw some live mice in my Vipera ammodytes montandoni terrarium, where I have 4 snakes(2.2).
Both females headed twords the same mouse and bit it. As the mouse was trying to run from them, both of them followed it and went into combat mode. Exactly like the males do it. Raising the front part of their body from the ground and trying to push the rival`s head to the ground. Viper body restling !!! I have never seen something like this befor and never even heard about it. They were fighting for the mouse. They didn`t bite each other or anything. Has any of you ever witness something like this with their snakes ? I, my self find it fascinating...
Best regards, Alex S.
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RE: Female Viper Fight
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by Scootertrash on January 7, 2005
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You'd better be careful when feeding in a terrarium with multiple snakes. I had a female Canebrake rattler bite my other female in the head once and it wasn't even over food. I have no idea what it was about but it was not pretty. I didn't lose either snake but had to treat the head wound and negotiating with the business end of a Canebrake or any ven for that matter isn't something that I enjoy. Just be careful. If it were me, I would separate the animals when feeding. But that's just me.
Clayton
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RE: Female Viper Fight
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by captiveherps on January 7, 2005
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Feeding several snakes in one tank is always a risk, not too bad with most hots as long as you referee, with constrictors you can end up with a ball of snakes tring to kill each other.
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RE: Female Viper Fight
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by LarryDFishel on January 7, 2005
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As you've already heard, this is probably not a good idea.
On the other hand, that IS a fascinating result. I've never seen two snakes pay any attention to eachother over food aside from one biting the other by accident (obviously mistaken identity, not "combat"). Are you SURE they're female? Either way, my guess would be that they just noticed eachother and went into combat because they think it's mating season, and it had nothing to do with the food (the food just brought them together). If you could determine that they really did fight over the food, that would probably be a new and significant discovery.
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RE: Female Viper Fight
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by Snake17 on January 7, 2005
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One of theese vipers gave birth to 7 babyes(all dead unfortunatly) this fall and the other one to 5 babyes(1 dead)...so I would think that they are both females :))
They did bite each other some time ago, 1 female bit a male twice and thet female was bitten once by the same male. That was over food. No ill effects acoured, proven by the fact that after the male got bitten it still fed instantly. I don`t like keeping them like this and I don`t aprove of it but I still have some work to do on my new terrarium so I`m forced to temporerely keep them together. After my new enlcoser will be complete i`ll split them up into pairs. I`ve also had one male bite him self. I`m sure that the fight was over food because it`s not maiting season untill april-may to them and since they haven`t been brumated I realy don`t think they`ll mait. And if they were to go into combat because it were breeding season they wouln`t just do it when a mouse is in the cage. The thing is that I heard of male vipers fighting but never saw females do this. And it also realy fun to watch 3 or 4 snakes run after the same mouse even if there are another 2 mice in the cage.
P.S.: I make sure that all of my snakes have been fed. I alow each viper to eat 2 mice befor I take it out of the cage and letting the others eat.
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RE: Female Viper Fight
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by AquaHerp on January 8, 2005
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Why not seperate the snakes while feeding? Or offer dead food by forceps? I have an enclosure with a trio of ammodytes transcaucasiana and would never consider letting them chase after food and battle over their meal. This is just asking for trouble. The mechanical damage alone that can be inflicted by a tankmate is not worth risking your snakes over. I would stongly suggest feeding fron tongs or forceps or seperating the animals for feeding purposes.
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RE: Female Viper Fight
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by Snakeskin on January 8, 2005
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Keep them separate, I've seen male courtship battle in my vipera ammodytes gregorwallneri just after feeding, quite interesting I must add
Unfortunately one time I fed them, they started to combat, and I left for a holidy, a friend of mine who takes care of the animals found them dead 2 days later, we presume they mistook eachother for food, and the bites have resulted in some kind of irreparable injury...
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RE: Female Viper Fight
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by Snake17 on January 8, 2005
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Most of my snakes won`t take dead food because they`re wild caught. And Vipera ammodytes transcaucasiana is Vipera transcaucasiana now. Belive me, if I see signs of trouble I step in emidatly. The thing is that if I take a snake out of the enclosure it may not feed afterwords because of the stress involved. Plus this gives me a chanse to study their feeding behavier better and gain a lot of knoledge. I respect your advice non the less. Best regards, Alex S.
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RE: Female Viper Fight
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by LarryDFishel on January 10, 2005
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I had this problem for a while with a group of cottonmouths kept in the same cage (wouldn't eat out of the cage, and I didn't trust them to eat together), so what I did was this: Get two containers. Move all but one snake out of the cage and into container #1. Feed the first snake in the cage. Move him to container #2. Move the next snake from container #1 tot he cage. Repeat until all have been fed. If they are not used to being handled, you may have to give each one a few minutes after putting it in the cage, but if they're battling over the food and eating while you watch, this shouldn't be an issue.
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