Baby garter ate another baby

[Yonner]

One of my baby garter snakes ate another of the baby snakes. They were all the same size. I assume it ate her sibling because now there are only two (was three) and the one is bloated very big. Should i be worried about the cannibal?

I didn't think they ate each other, especially since they were all identical in size. I am sad at the loss of one of the trio...:(

[Stefan-A]

Separate them. You wouldn't happen to know what kind of garter snakes you have?

[mb90078]

This is why everyone advocates supervision if electing to do group feeding. It's extremely rare, but accidents happen.

Is it impossible that one didn't escape and maybe the other hog all the food?

Out of curiosity, what species/sub species are we talking about?

[guidofatherof5]

Nice to have you on the forum.
It would be great if you could post a photo so we could help you identify your snake.
Until then I would separate them out.
Here's a link to the forum care sheet:
Garter Snake Care Sheet - Caresheets (http://www.thamnophis.com/caresheets/index.php?title=Garter_Snake_Care_Sheet)

[Yonner]

I feed them in a separate enclosure and individually. There wasn't any food in the cage at the time.

[Yonner]

I'll get photo's up tomorrow..

[guidofatherof5]

I feed them in a separate enclosure and individually. There wasn't any food in the cage at the time.

There may have been some leftover scent. Garters have an awesome sense of smell.
Feeding accidents are always a terrible thing.

[Yonner]

They haven't been fed in a couple of days either.

[guidofatherof5]

T.e.vagrans have been know to be cannibalistic(so I've been told)
What part of the country are you in?

[Yonner]

Utah. These were captive bred, though I don't the source of the parents.

[Snakers]

pics will help

[kibakiba]

Indeed, lets see some pics of those babies!

[Yonner]

Here is a picture from when we first got them a few weeks ago. I'll post closer images later tonight. Thanks everyone.

[gregmonsta]

Vagrans? .... ie Cannibal :eek:

[guidofatherof5]

Looks like a T.e.vagrans(Wandering Garter Snake) to me.
Western Terrestrial Garter Snake - Caresheets (http://www.thamnophis.com/caresheets/index.php?title=Western_Terrestrial_Garter_Snake)

[Stefan-A]

Looks about right.

[ssssnakeluvr]

definitely wandering garter. they can be cannibalistic. who bred them? and where in Utah? just curious, I live in Magna...

[flickerfriend]

Awwww.. thats sad. poor little baby snakie..

[Snakers]

there the most known to cannibalize I think??

[Yonner]

definitely wandering garter. they can be cannibalistic. who bred them? and where in Utah? just curious, I live in Magna...

They came from the Ogden area. I'm down in Sandy, drove up to pick them up.

[ssssnakeluvr]

cool! was it Jeff that bred them? he's the only other person I know of with the permits to breed local species....would be nice to know! :D
I live out in Magna and breed all sorts of garters!

[Yonner]

She spit her sister back up today.

Here are some more shots.

The first two are of of Snickers (aka Hannibal). Snickers is the pickiest eater, preferring worms to anything else (and snakes I guess). She is also the calmest and slithers on over when the cage is opened.

The second two are of Slither. She eats anything, but is still a bit skittish. She calms down after a minute though. She loves to climb.

The poor baby was Slinky. Slinky loved to bury herself in the substrate and preferred guppies to anything else, though she wouldn't refuse worm.

[Yonner]

cool! was it Jeff that bred them? he's the only other person I know of with the permits to breed local species....would be nice to know! :D
I live out in Magna and breed all sorts of garters!

I have no idea. They were from the local online classifieds (the Craigslist equivalent around here).

[Yonner]

Looks like a T.e.vagrans(Wandering Garter Snake) to me.
Western Terrestrial Garter Snake - Caresheets (http://www.thamnophis.com/caresheets/index.php?title=Western_Terrestrial_Garter_Snake)

Looking at the pictures, they look more like Thamnophis elegans vascotanneri (upper basin garter) to me.

Since I have little experience in the matter, I'll accept your ID.

[guidofatherof5]

Very nice looking snakes.

[ssssnakeluvr]

vascotanneri no longer exists....were found around the green river basin area. those are typical wanderings. probably someone's kid caught one, had babies and are selling them on craigslist....not legal, but not really a problem. I see them on KSL.com in the classifieds here and there.

[Yonner]

vascotanneri no longer exists....were found around the green river basin area. those are typical wanderings. probably someone's kid caught one, had babies and are selling them on craigslist....not legal, but not really a problem. I see them on KSL.com in the classifieds here and there.

Thanks for the info. KSL is where I found them.

On your website they look just like the picture for normal wandering. Now I know what I have! Excellent!

Thanks all.

[Ameivaboy]

There may have been some leftover scent. Garters have an awesome sense of smell.
Feeding accidents are always a terrible thing.


This happened to me a few years ago.
I was feeding babies like this

http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h8/Ameivaboy/DSC02208-1.jpg

Then would reintroduce them to the community cage as soon as they got them down. Which resulted in this at one point.



http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h8/Ameivaboy/Thamnophis/DSC02424-1.jpg

This saddened me very much. The Concinnus was the prettiest one from that litter and was going to be a holdback. I was able to get the concinnus out of the pickeringii alive, but it died the next day.


Nowadays I let them sit for about an hour before re-introducing them.
Havent had an issue since.

[Yonner]

That is a very sad picture indeed. I've been feeding mine and then returning them back right after, but now that the two are separated it won't be an issue.

The snake eat snake incident happened between feedings, where they had fed the previous day and would feed the next or so.

[ConcinusMan]

Dang, that sucks about your snake... and the concinnus too.

Some people have no problems, but wanderings are known to eat each other. Take precautions!

[The Snake Whisperer]

I've never seen any of my Easterns of any age try to eat another snake. Lately I've been experimenting with foods & feeding and found out that I can set a dish of beef canned cat food slices in a community cage and the snakes don't fight over the food at all. In fact, they seem to sort of take turns eating, a few snakes at a time. I was so amazed because I'd fed snakes separately until having so many snakes to deal with this summer, that it was becoming too laborious a chore to try to feed them all separately.
I have snakes sorted into cages according to size and condition (all were rescued because they were injuried in various degrees of severity and would have died if I hadn't rescued them. I will write another thread about this situation too.
I supervised all the community feeding experiments constantly, mostly because I was so fascinated by the snakes behaviors. The more I've watched Easterns interact, the more I'm convinced that contrary to science thinking snakes are solitary creatures, Eastern garters are social and prefer the company of other Eastern garters. In the wild, I rarely ever encounter just one Eastern garter snake. Many times I've come across a group of adult females lined up a foot or two apart along a small stream of water in the field after a hard rain, clearly all looking for food and resembling a group of fishermen lined up with their buddies on a bridge!

[ConcinusMan]

My concinnus don't normally try to eat other snakes or each other but when they go crawling through fish, another concinnus will mistake them for food and attack and try to swallow the other snake.

So, there's other reasons this can happen. It doesn't always have to be cannibalism and it doesn't always have to be that the snake was out to eat another snake. Sometimes it's just a case of mistaken identity.