I am sorry, but I do not understand why you say what you do. Have you simply not witnessed it or just pigeonhole/dismissed what you saw.



This type event has been recorded my many others. In the case of pythons, its very easy to tell what an infertile looks like. The barkers time lapsed a nesting childrens python popping out bad eggs.



In my case, I first realized what I was seeing with Womas and blackheadeds. They would lay eggs, move a certain percentage and coil around them. The others would be dicarded, and most were FERTILE, as when they are laid, they have a fairly large embryo. But those eggs that were discarded, never hatched. I also cut open dicarded eggs and found dead embryos. The snakes do know what is viable and what is not. DO THEY DO THIS IN ALL CASES, no they rarely do this in captivity as nothing in captivity is normal or recognizable to them. Even with bad conditions, we do witness a window into their natural behavior.



With kings, they can and do consume infertiles or dead eggs. But they also can consume a whole clutch. These events may not be related. Where the eggs fertile and dead, did you ever check. Live eggs have oxygenated blood, dead eggs do not. Most recently deposited colubrid eggs have a well developed embryo. So its easy to check.



The problem is, 99% of the people who witness this event interfere with the process. They do not allow the animals to finish what they do. Then also do not investigate what they saw.



Also, having marginal/inferior conditions can indeed cause insanity(consuming ones own recruiting effort) without question, to consume ones own eggs cannot be considered normal, it has to be something wrong. As their lifes task is to recruit.



It appears to me, that some folks, like you perhaps, keep animals in a very controlled way and then deny these animals have any behaviors they do not express in DRAWERS.



Basic cages, paper towels, water bowl and a hide, is not the way to observe the vast majority of their behaviors. Keeping them solitary, introducing a male after the female has produced ova, then removing the male, is also not the way to observe behaviors. This is mechanical human intervention. Its about us, not about the snakes.



Take egg laying, As I have mentioned many times, how many wild clutches are laid in the light????? like in a moss box. How many? In nature they lay their eggs in very specific places. In some cases, in very reliable conditions, like a certain type of place that has a certain set of conditions(species specific)(what would they be?) Do you, duplicate the conditions they choose in the wild? In not, why would you expect anything normal to that animal. Do you have them in anything close to what they would lay in, if given a choice(the type of conditions a wild snake would nest in. We all know if denied any suitable place, they will lay in the water bowl. If given anything better they will use that. But what are the conditions they would pick above all others?



For instance, some populations of L.thayeri, lay eggs in earth burrows, in very repeatable specific conditions. Some populations of L.pyromelana, lay in rock crevices, communally. This is from field observations. Nesting seems to be population specific. You cannot test this in a shoebox. To test these behaviors, you must include the conditions that population would naturally pick.



Another behavior, ritualized combat, is a very interesting behavior, it can be duplicated in captivity, but in most cases, by introducing two males, you get a whole basket of behaviors. Some simply eat the other male. Others bite the crap out of another male. Other times they simply ignore each other. "Ritualized combat" requires a unique set of conditions and a unique set of individual animals to duplicate. Such is behavior.



In this case, WHAT HAVE YOU SEEN? snakes eating their own eggs? what on earth would cause that? Snakes removing bad eggs? what would the benefit be to have such a behavior? cheers

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