Snake Mating Dance .. or is it ??

[Anuradha Nautiyal]

Hello All,

Long time since I visited the forum .. hope all of you are doing good.

On a recent visit to Nisaragadhama I happened to witness the snake mating dance/fight. We were enjoying the water at the river point when we noticed the snake fight / dance on the opposite bank. It was really a beautiful experience to watch the snakes move and glide and kind of create a symphony with that movement.

It is a popular belief that this dance is between a male and a female and is part of the mating ritual .. however , few months ago I had seen a documentary on discovery where they had metioned that this ritual is not the actual mating sequence but instead is a fight between two males. The fight has an unwritten rule that the snakes will not bite each other, the loser leaves the territory and the winner gets to mate the female.

This dance/fight went on for more than 10-15 minutes ..and later we saw one snake swimming accross to our side of the river (which I assumed was the loser in this case)

This incident happened around 6-6:30 pm so the lighting was very low. I did try quite a few options to get a good shot but could manage only average quality . Also since I am limited by the zoom on my lense .. I had to crop the image quite a bit to make this even visible.

The image quality is not good but this is just an attempt to share the experience with you all.

Please do suggest what other settings I could have done to get a better image

Thanks
Anu

[Praveen Siddannavar]

Lovely action captured Anu. This a rare sight, you are lucky to have witnessed and photographed. In King Cobras the two male fight without biting, not sure if it is the same with other snakes. To me this looks like a Rat Snake, experts can comment better. Look forward to more from this series
tfs

[Bibhav Behera]

Anuratha , you are right about the fight between the males. They donot bite when they fight for the right to mate. These look like rat snakes. Would have been better if you had got a close up..
Thanks for sharing.

[Mrudul Godbole]

Nice behaviour captured. You are right that it is a fight. You could have tried going closer, which would have helped to get more details. What were the EXIF details?

I had witnessed and photographed similar fight in Hasserghatta last year.
I had posted this image in the forum, posting the link to it - http://www.indiawilds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1238

[Abhishek Jamalabad]

A lovely behaviour record. It is indeed a fight between 2 males. They look like rat snakes. The one that leaves the spot is the loser.
Thanks for sharing.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Good to have observed this. I am not sure whether you could have moved in closer without disturbing them. Thanks for sharing. Where is nisargadhama?

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Mohan Raj]

Good behaviour photograph of snake. It is not easy to focus when the snakes are moving. You have done well to capture it.

TFS.