Ethology is different then pure science. There are many responses to the same conditions. Which means, it takes a real learning curve. In order to "get a handle" on how to do this, you have to have faith in the animals. Not faith in the people who keep animals. Which is a HUGE problem here. Here is more about keepers and not about the subject "the animals"
So yes, you have been informed that they do live in groups(of various sizes and times) in nature, and that it can and is being duplicated successfully in captivity.
What your not sure of is, HOW its done. From reading your posts, you already prejudice yourself. That is, your basing your thoughts of Failures and not successes. If you want to understand something, you really should investigate the successes. Your questions should be based on successful results.
What you are doing is going on yours and others failures. Which is silly if you think about it. A failure only means it did not work. No successful knowledge is gained from failing. It becomes a world of WHAT NOT TO DO, instead of a world of WHAT YOU CAN DO. Which dominates HERE.
Animals are much like people, two base behavioral worlds, sanity and insanity. Sanity is when behavior produces a successful outlook or result. Insanity is when said behaviors do not produce a successful outlook or results. Its very simple. Our task is to allow behavior to become sane.
Who are we to determine whats sane? hahahahahahaha. Ok, getting a little of course here.
All you have to do is go to one of many field forums and you can see a pile of natural snakes TOGETHER. If that is your sanity, then how do you get captives to achieve that? That becomes the question.
Well, I am not all that smart, but in ALL other animals, bonding or groups are formed EARLY. In the nest, while being raised(parental influence) etc.
We know so little about reptiles(how they comunicate) we simply say they do not do this stuff. But we do see things that absolutely cause us to question that.
For instance, Why do baby snakes hang around their parents in nature, shown on field forum. Live bearers hang around tightly, with/on the mother, until a little after their shed. Then they hang around loosely. Those snakes that hatch, hang around eachother until sometime after they shed, tightly, then loosely later.
What is odd is, These offspring often end up in the same places as their parents, without being taught????????????? How did they get there, Luck??????
ok, enough of this causing you to think. The point is, bonding is most likely KEY with the very young, but not exclusive to the very young(that dang behavior) It appears, the older the individual, the less they have the ability to bond. Hmmmmmmmmm common in most animals, humans, birds, etc.
With many animals, wild, farm, or domestic. They imprint on whatever is around when they are young. Birds raised by people are poor breeders, etc. Heck, so are mice. If you raise a mouse in solitary conditions, it will be a very poor canidate for a breeding group. Raise them in groups and they become good canidates for a breeding group. Man is stuff is simple and known.
The problem is, reptile folks EXCLUDE themselves from the rest of the world(heck if I know why)
I understand I am not all that smart, and I feel you do not need to be all that smart. All you have to do is realize the animals are smarter then you.
If you raise an animal in solitary conditons, what are you expecting later??????? and why are you expecting that?????
The reality is, some reptiles are very tolerant behaviorally. That is, they have trends, the younger the better, but they never give up. The reality is, all reptile populations that I have worked with, have both solitary and goup parts to them. Such is behavior, it keeps on learning. It stays with what works and explores what does not.
In your case, your snakes were mearly talking, they did not try to kill eachother, they were jerking around, do you know what that meant???? How do you know what that meant? You simply turned them off. You did not allow them to comunicate.
Touching, twitching, mounting, combating, and biting, are all ways they comunicate. Of course if one trys to kill the other, that is INSANE, so seperate them and then figure out if there is reason why that occurred.
Again in your case and many here, you failed your first test in the first grade, so you quit school. Good on you.
Forgive me for being MEAN! but dude and dudettes, you want to know stuff, but you do not want to read the whole book. The animals ARE THE BOOK, not the people here. or authors, Specailly not god the kingsnake guy, all these people are just reporters of some ability or another. of course god(hubbs) is special(sanity vs. insanity is questioned here)
A question, they do group up in nature, what causes that, they can eat eachother in nature, what causes that. There are indeed causes of all this and more. But what the hey, what do I/we know?????????????
