Growing male vs. females

[cristine]

Are females always going to be bigger all the time? :rsmile:

[JimmyDavid]

most times, yes!

In African rock pythons i have seen males growing bigger than females, though. But everybody tells me that females usually catch up and gain on males, so...i'm not sure. The replies i had were from guys with good experience.

[KarlSnake]

Most of the time females will grow larger than males - in order to support the eggbearing function, things just work better if you're bigger.

In species where males combat for females, males are invariably larger than females if the adult sex ratios are close to balanced or female-heavy. If the males compete for females & the adult sex ratio is male-heavy, the males are always smaller than the females.

These generalities prevail across many orders, genera, & species. Generalities, however, do not apply to any particular individual order, genera, or species & even within a species or geographical distribution area.

Check out the reproductive strategy of gartersnakes - they've even got a few random males that cheat by appearing (smelling, actually) like females & on rarer occasion, vice-versa.

Out in the Indonesian archipelago, female retics are larger than males, sometimes by a wide margin, even though the sex ratio is fairly well balanced in that region. The males compete for females, but they don't combat for mating rights. In the continental highland rainforest jungles of Southeast Asia, the male retics do combat for females & grow quite a bit larger & faster than the females, although their sizes do tend to equalize as they reach giant adult size.

On occasion, the sex of a specimen is misdetermined - Colossus was a male that was discovered to actually be a female at necropsy. Nasty-tempered WC monster, the everted cloaca was misidentified as everted hemipenes, probably because the snake was just so danged huge.

If your goal is to raise a larger snake, a female will get there most (NOT all) of the time.

A well-fed male will exceed the size of an undernourished female.

It is, however completely unacceptable cruelty to starve an animal of any kind in order to restrict its growth. Please take up Bonsai if you have predilections in that direction.