I said I bought a mirror for my deremensis earlier. Well, he had been sickly, with an eye infection for a while. now that he's healing up, I have been trying to get him to mate.
While he was ill, he shyed away from everything, including the females--even the subadult. when I placed him in a room with a mirror, he gaped, and tried to flee--wimp.
I showed him his reflection a few times,in his own cage. After he noticedit, I began to pull it away slowly. After 2-3 tries, he began to display at it, puffing up, gapiing, lunging. He wasn't going to back down. A few times, after scaring away the phantom menace, he continued to go after the females.
Seems likely that the interaction of males contributes to their mating. He was surely not feeling strong for a while, if his own reflection scared him without a fight.
now, it looks like he's more confident.
I had a very aggressive veild a few years back. when he matured, I tried to mate hm with one of my female. He was all macho, going right after her, ignoring her warnings. I was unable to stop him OR her...
She did that "two footed rocking thing" and lunged right at him, knocking him off the branch(he was a little small at the time).
He ran to the bottom of the cage and hid.
He was NEVER the same. He became one of those nervous veilds. One that all you ever see is the feet, and the two eyeballs on theother side of a branch. He was afraid of everything from then on....until my OTHER, NICER, aggressive FAVORITE veild got out of his cage, and then squeezed through the scared one's. I came back and found them in a ball, with about a teaspoon of blood on the floor of the cage. While he was a wuss, he was a heck of a lot bigger than my favorite male, and ripped his jaw apart. this eventually killed him.
