Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My brother introduced his two cribos and everything has been fine , well today he came home to a torn up dead male!!
It looks like the female attacked his head .Is this common, the female is approx 6 1/2 foot and he was about 5 foot.

thanks jason

Yikes....Sorry to hear that. From what I hear it isn't all that uncommon for them to be eat or kill one another. I was nervous when putting mine together. They were very well fed and nothing happened except the female getting a little irritated when the male was around at first. She struck at him once that I saw.

Again sorry to hear the bad news.

I have not heard of a death before..Condolences..Have heard of big fights and wounds but I've never experienced that..I have always fed my animals heavily 2-3 days before introducing them to each other and have never had a problem. I've always been nervous with big size discrepencies as this scenario suggests tho..
Can you give us some more details? When were they last fed, temperature, how long they were left together, did they show any interest in mating,sure they were an actual pair(male and female) etc..In my experience, if they are going to "get friendly" the male wastes no time! If no mating behavior in an hour I separte them a wait a while before re-trying..
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Carl W Gossett
Garage Door Herps
Monument,Colorado...northern territory of the Great Republic of Texas

i wonder if perhaps they were actually 2 males........

I've had an experience with a texas indigo pair where the male was overly aggressive to the female. Multiple lacerations were the result.

With that being my experience, I always observe the pair when I put them together. If the male doesn't start looking for love, or if the female desperately avoids it, I separate them.

I think this type of behavior is more individual and territory related.

Doug T

I can confirm, the best way to determine a female in the woods upon a glance is she has breeding scars on the neck from the male holding on, also I bread cribos and my male never shread her but he did hold on with all his might.