Spilotes pullatus

[Roman]

As I mentioned in my previous post, keeping my Spilotes together works good, they are in no way aggressive against each other. However, during January (about one month after I had put them together) I could watch the first male biting the second male.

I watched how my first male was following the second male and was biting it in the lower third of its body. It was definitely not a hunting bite, the bite was only
short (maybe a second or so) and there was no attempt to constrict the
other male, there were only those short bites. I watched this behaviour
several times, it stopped about 4 or 5 weeks later in February. Since then I could not watch it again.

I strongly suppose that my old male is trying to defend his territory
against the “intruder” during mating season. Another observation I made was my old male rubbing his lower jaw on several branches in the enclosure and the new male flicking his tongue and sniffing these spots. I suppose the old
male was marking his territory.

It does not seem to be a general territorial behaviour, it did not occur bevore January and did stop in February. I will get another enclosure of the same dimensions as my current one minus the left corner, so it will be a "normal" rectangle (2 x 0.9 x 1.5 m/ 6.6 x 2.9 x 4.9 ft). This is for the second male and hopefully another female. I will completely equip it but I am curious if the same behaviour will occur in January again. Either way I will separate both males beginning next year.

I could not find any references about this behaviour in any
literature available to me, neither about Spilotes nor any other
colubrids in general. A fellow snake keeper I spoke about this told me
that adult male Morelia viridis might even kill each other if kept in
the same cage, but he had never encountered such behaviour in his
colubrids. So I am really curious what will happen in January.