Mating duels between different members of some species are not all that unusual, but the one witnessed earlier this month by Arkansas resident Dawn Kelly was truly rare in that it not only featured a type of creature not normally prone to such behavior, but two different species!
The encounter in question took place near the Buffalo National River Park and involved two types of venomous snakes – a cottonmouth and a copperhead – according to Live Science and National Geographic. Upon encountering the unusual combatants, she recorded their fight with her smartphone, then sent the video to the Auburn University Museum of Natural History.
Shortly thereafter, Kelly learned just how unusual what she had witnessed truly was.
As David Steen, a wildlife ecologist and assistant research professor at the Alabama facility first watched the footage, he said he “knew immediately” that he “was looking at something that was going to blow everybody’s minds.” Steen told Nat Geo that it’s “unusual to see snakes fighting,” he added that “what makes this particular observation is that they are two different species.”
Evidence of cross-species mating between different vipers?
Kelly told LiveScience that she first saw the viper vs. viper encounter while looking out of the window in her Snowball, Arkansas cabin. The two snakes, each of whom were said to be at least two feet long, were so focused on their fight that she was able to sneak up on them and film them for several minutes before they finally noticed her.
“To my knowledge, no one’s ever documented two different vipers in combat before,” Steen told the website. What makes it more unusual is that, to the best of the researcher’s knowledge, vipers of different species do not typically mate with each other (although Nat Geo pointed out that this behavior has taken place in captivity, resulting in hybrid “cottonhead” snakes).
Does the fact that these two serpents were squaring off against the same, unseen female suggest that cross-species mating is more common amongst snakes than previously believed? “It’s one observation, so we don’t want to read into it too much,” Steen explained. “We don’t know if it’s necessarily widespread behavior, but it does make us want to rethink what we know about how these species interact with each other.”
Of course, Nat Geo also pointed out that since the female object of their desire does not appear in the video footage, there is the possibility that there were multiple possible mates – one belonging to each species – located somewhere off-camera. Since Kelly’s presence was ultimately detected, we are left to ponder exactly who won, and how everything turned out in the end.
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Image credit: Dawn Kelly
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