Wow... that many Naja under one house... that is simply amazing. I wish I could be over there studying them. It seems that several females have used the same nesting site which is very interesting. Maternal aggregations have been documented in some species, but I'm not sure if it has in any Naja species (sorry, I'm not well versed in the Naja literature and the only experience I have with them is in captivity). I'd be interested in seeing if there were any males around the site or if all the adults were females that were returning to the same site for nesting... and if so, I wonder about the relatedness of the females to one another. Are they from similar recent lineage? How are they all finding the same site, and what is driving them there to lay their eggs??? Very interesting, and all questions that I have no answers to.

As Randal mentioned, I'll be presenting some copperhead aggregation data at the IHS meeting. Unlike this Naja aggregation, the animals at my study site were all adults/subadults, not recently born individuals. I hope and look forward to seeing many of you there at IHS. There's a great list of speakers this year (as usual), and anyone interested in venomous reptiles could walk away from this years meeting with some great contacts and knowledge regardless of their previous background with venomous herps (there are also some nonvenomous herp talks scheduled, but I figured anyone reading this forum would be interested in knowing that there are quite a few hot herp presentations).

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