Today, I'm sure I witnessed what you meant, Nick, when you responded to my last post "breeding behavior" and wrote that push-ups are more of a territorial thing than breeding behavior. Today, on the hottest day of this year so far, I put my pair of chucks in their outdoor enclosure. I first put the female in and within a minute, she started doing push-ups! Amazing! Well, to me anyway. LOL. I have never witnessed her doing push-ups before, ever! Next, I added the male, and in about 3 minutes, he started doing push-ups too! I've never witnessed him exhibiting this behavior either. Excuse my excitement, but I love watching this. Very comical.

A little while later, it appeared to me that when the male nudged up against the female, he was about to bite her neck. Maybe what I am witnessing is just hopeful thinking.

Anyway, here's my theory as to why they both displayed. I wondered at first if it was simply something to do with the sunshine. As anyone knows who has kept almost any lizard, sunshine will bring out the best in them (natural behavior, better color, etc.). I'm also thinking that since that enclosure is essentially new to them (I only had them out in it for a single day earlier this spring when it wasn't nearly as hot as it is today), they were simply advertising to other potential chucks that might be in the area. As they often do, of course, they did a lot of tongue tasting of the rocks. After "smelling" and tasting the rocks and finding that no other chucks were present, maybe they were simply claiming this new area as their own. Maybe, inside, for whatever reason, the male doesn't "feel" the need to display because the territory is well marked as being his and he hasn't had any threats or challenges from other males. It would have been interesting to see if both he and the female would have displayed if I would have simply put them in another indoor setup that wasn't marked with his scent. I suspect that both the natural sunshine and the new enclosure both played a role to their change in behavior. I just found it strange how quickly the new environment resulted in a behavior I've never seen from them before.

Even later, I witnessed what appeared to be the male bobbing and doing push-ups a little differently. I know you mentioned, Nick, that push-ups were more of a territorial thing and excuse my ignorance since this is basically new to me, but do chucks have a different rhythm when doing push-ups as part of their ritualistic breeding behavior (e.g. as do green anoles when displaying at females) or did you mean that push-ups are not even part of their breeding behavior but instead used simply to establish territories, dominance, etc.

I wish I had taken some pics of the long, waxy femoral pore plugs for those of you who haven't seen them. Pretty interesting looking IMO. As I mentioned before, my male, a few weeks after coming out of brumation, developed long, waxy plugs coming out of his femoral pores that looked like the scales on a fringe-toed lizards feet. Most of these have broken off or have been worn shorter, so any pics now would not look as interesting. It does seem that these secretions coincided with my male exhibiting different behavior (what I would describe as almost biting the female's neck).

Does anyone have any links of a male displaying towards a female (whatever that encompasses)and them mating afterwards? I looked on Google and Youtube but didn't find much.

Thanks,
Perry

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