Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Yesterday I went to the live reptile exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, in NYC. Does anyone know why the Green Mamba and Gabon Viper were kept in a cage together? I would have thought that each would be agitated by the other's presence, but obviously I don't know much about snakes.

Not sure why you posted this question here? But...Gaboons are a very sedentry, terrestrial snake that tolerates quite a bit for animal with such an effective defensive abilty at it's disposal...they don't irratate easily. And since they utilize two entirely different habitats (green mambas being almost entirely arboreal) this exhibit is not only a good representation of two impressive venomous african snakes that occur in the same area, but it allows for easy maintence since you can treat the enclosure almost like two seperate ones...the Gaboon isn't going to climb and rarely do Greens take to the ground, even to feed...so you can work both animals fairly easily...as long as you have a trap box for the mamba or have two people to clean the enclosure. Green mambas are exhibited frequently with not only with a Gaboon or two, but with either of the two other large Bitis sp. Puffs or Rhinocerous vipers.

Thanks for the reply!
It now occurs to me that this is a forum regarding kingsnakes, specifically...I had thought it was a general forum for kingsnake.com... sorry!