Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm another old-timer that has been gone a while but slowly coming back. I've been often wondering what males do in the wild when they meet up. Do they fight til one kills another like people say they would do in captivity?

I would say a lot of territorial fighting could occur. But this would include a lot of head bobbing and threat displays. As well as chasing each others in circles flattening up. The bigger tougher male would win the fight and the submissive one would loose the territory and or females. I would say death would be pretty rare.

The reason they can kill each other in captivity is because they are stuck in a couple square foot enclosures versus square miles to escape each other. When stuck together the agression can be non stop. There is no break and eventually the non dominant male becomes too stressed to eat. Eventually they wither away and die.

It is best to not keep adult males together unless you have a greenhouse type set up with ALOT of room.

In the wild, males can flee a stronger more dominate male. In captivity, they are stuck in a cage with no escape. In nature, battles for mates rarely result in the death of one of the combatants. It is still very possible, as a lucky bite could severely injure the individual, hampering it enough it cannot fend for itself.

For bearded dragons most often its all display to show they are of better health etc. Hence why bearded dragons get such black beards and splay them out, bobbing heads etc. This is common with many species of reptiles, all to prevent injury to both. If two males are pretty evenly matched they will fight till one gives up and flees.
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PHLdyPayne

Forum Princess

I keep a colony of dragons in a large room like a pen and there are 3 males loose in there right now. Two are sub adults and one is an adult, I rarely even see them noticing one another. On the outside of the dragon room, I have a male that likes to roam the house. Every once in a while one of the caged males works the pin out of the doors from repetetive shaking and gets out. They do exactly what the others said, beard displays, circle fight all flattened out, and one eventually runs off. Worse damage ever is a tail bite. I do bring more dominant males in the room with the girls on occasion and the submissive males only fight when they are encounted by the dominant male, they don't run out to pick a fight of their own. Its more the dominant male is just pushing them around to show them whos boss, if they run off they get left alone, if they stand up they circle and tail bite. Its all about territory and females, although the males sometimes seem more interested in each other than they are the females. Frustrating but so true.

I have two males that were kept together in a cage for the first 6 months of their lives. The one, River, were completely withdrawn and he never grew bigger. It took over a year before River started showing personality and today he firmly believes he can concur the world and even chase after my iguana. They are now over 8 years old and still hate each other and will kill if they get an opportunity. I wrote a couple of threads about dragons being kept together and I know that it will spur a lot of argument. Never less, I am against keeping dragons together in one cage purely because in the wild the moment they are born they scatter to get as far away from each other as possible. To me 1% chance of fighting is 100% too much. There is also a link to a website that I found where they load videos of dragons fighting. It is almost as if it has become a new sport like pit bull fighting.
2 Dragons, 1 cage, why not

Here is a video of my dragons, at the end you'll see what happened when they saw each other.
My dragons
Link