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after that they can be prone to
biting each other’s tails and legs off.
Anyone who has tried to raise a
clutch of bearded dragons together
would know that they are liable to
do the same thing. And if you keep a
bunch of baby Antaresia together
and put in a few pinkies, you are
asking for trouble. The hatchling
pythons are likely to cannibalise
each other, but because the ‘food’
items are too big for their digestive
systems, they will regurgitate their
siblings after a day or two. In each
case you lose not one snake but
two, as the culprit is also likely to die
soon afterwards.
Of course, none of these examples
would occur in the wild, as
newborns or hatchlings quickly
disperse in different directions, but
combating amongst elapids is
obviously well documented -
particularly black snakes and Eastern
Brown Snakes. I remem-
bered John Cann had a
good video of one snake
eating another, so I asked
him about it while compil-
ing this article. He said
this incident occurred in
Gundagai quite a few
years back. Apparently,
the owner or perhaps the
manager of the local meat
works arrived home to
observe a large Eastern Brown
Snake in the act of swallowing a Red
-bellied Black Snake. The man went
to get his camera, but when he
returned the black snake had
extricated itself and was crawling
away!
‘Surely not,’ I said to John. ‘The
brown snake must have spat it out.’
But John was adamant that the
black snake had survived to make
good its escape, and told me that he
2.
had had the story checked and that
it is supposed to be true. I do know
that most elapids can handle the
venom of other elapids without ill
effect.
Mulga Snakes, or King Brown
Snakes, are also notoriously
cannibalistic. Once in the days when
I used to take tourists on trips we
were travelling on the back road
from Pine Creek to Kakadu. We had