Overly Aggressive Male?

[lisab_83]

I just introduced another female crestie to my male (who is currently residing with another female) and the response was not what I expected. As soon as he spotted her, he jumped on her and grabbed her head while making loud squacks. She started squacking and trying to escape and I had to pry him off of her before he hurt her. When I had her out of the cage, he jumped on my hand and continued to attack my fingers and palm until I got him back in his tank.


Has anyone experianced this behavior in a male crested before (he's about 2yrs old and never done this before)? The 'female' I introduced is 35g and exhibiting no signs of maleness, so I don't think that is the problem. Is there anyway of introducing them slowly and seeing if they get along better, or is this normal behavior?? :confused:

[babysweet]

I really can't give you any exceptional advice, as I'm much too new to cresties to have delved into breeding, let alone experienced any of these problems. But from a simply biological point of view, I would surmise that several things could be going on here.

Is it possible that she was previously housed with another male, and still smelled of him?

Is it possible that maybe he simply doesn't like her? We find this problem with dogs, but I don't know if it happens with Rhacs....

Is the size difference severe? If the female is only 35g and the male is... say 45 or 50g, it may be a matter of bullying and nothing else.

Also, I've noticed that there's a heirarchy in cresties housed in colonies (we have four together, all five-six months of age in a HUGE natural vivarium) to the point where there are one or two of them that will ritually sit on the other's heads. The other two allow this to happen, becoming very docile or almost submissive. I wonder, if they gave any inclination of trying to get away, if the more dominant crestie would respond violently....

Interesting topic, dominance in geckos...

Kim

[clint545]

What you witnessed was the male trying to mate! They are pretty aggressive when they mate!

[DragnDrop]

Mating can be a rough experience, sounds to me like that's what you saw too. It's quite easy to understand why mating is the most common cause of dropped tails too.