Social hierarchy?

[Stefan-A]

anthropormorphasizing, what a strange word, my vocabulary skills have slipped away momentairly but i take it that from unsucessfully googling it that it means somthing like associating an animal or person with the other?

"the attribution of uniquely human characteristics to non-human creatures and beings, natural and supernatural phenomena, material states and objects or abstract concepts."

Anthropomorphism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[adamanteus]

I don't believe there is any social hierarchy in snakes. Thankfully, I'm already bald, or I would be ripping my hair out at the thought of a snake being 'gentlemanly'.

[Zigmund]

thank you stefan

[Lori P]

Thanks for the input. It doesn't seem impossible, tho, does it, because when we confine them to a tank, they have no choice but to live in a colony, do they? They can't exactly move 200 feet down the hill.

I call my roosters "gentlman" when they bring food to their hens and then step back and let them eat. More hair flying? :-)

[Steven@HumboldtHerps]

I would agree that there is no social heirarchy. Instead, I would think such behaviors to be based on intimidation, perhaps in ways too subtle for us to even perceive as "bullying". On the rare occasions where I have put corns (sorry, I know it is a Thamnophis site!) together, it is always the bigger snake that eats first, picks the best basking spot first, etc.

Even calling this "intimidation" might be far-fetched; perhaps there is no intent - bigger snake, faster snake, more experienced snake ....gets what it needs first!

[drache]

my snakes just slither over each other
when feeding snakes that are housed in groups, I always feed the biggest one first and I've seen the little parietalis try to grab food from the almost twice as big eastern - no "deference" there
they may congregate, but I doubt there's anything we would recognize as social structure