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First encounter - aggressive female...?
Posted: Tue May 03, 2016 8:49 am
by Wiwaxia
Hi all,
Today was the first time we let our two meraukes meet. The larger one we've had for a long time and he is confirmed to be a male (sperm plugs, hemipene sometimes visible when excreting). The other one, however, we only own for two weeks or so and bought her at a reptile fair where her gender was confirmed by probing. Today, when they met, they ignored each other initially but then, all of a sudden, she started to bite him just over the hind legs in his side. He still did nothing other than walking away and still ignoring her. We had this encounter organised outside their enclosures as - based on my previous experience with other reptiles - they showed the lest amount of aggression when it was the territory of neither of them. Have you had any similar experience? Would this mean that 'she' is in fact a 'he'?
Re: First encounter - aggressive female...?
Posted: Tue May 03, 2016 9:22 am
by Dakota
This is why I do not like behavioral sexing, because it only leaves you with more questions. It is hard to say not witnessing it in person, but I would like to point out you can not determine gender at all via probing technique. People have tried and tried, and both males and females probe deep or shallow — it does not work at all from what I've been told by those that have tried. I would say it is likely too late to get any breeding behaviors at this point in the season (females have been giving birth for some time now). Just sounds to me the skink was annoyed by the other, perhaps.
Re: First encounter - aggressive female...?
Posted: Tue May 03, 2016 7:15 pm
by alichamp
So if it's not breeding season there (but more like birthing season) why are you introducing them? Do you know how old they both are?
Here is a thread on
Quarantine practices.
Re: First encounter - aggressive female...?
Posted: Wed May 04, 2016 7:31 am
by Wiwaxia
Three and three and a half years. Introduced them only out of sheer curiosity. Also, as we are moving pretty soon, it was an attempt to see how would they put up with traveling together to the new place (we have one good box), which obviously won't work, so have to get hold of an other box.
Re: First encounter - aggressive female...?
Posted: Wed May 04, 2016 12:30 pm
by Susann
Wiwaxia wrote:how would they put up with traveling together to the new place (we have one good box)
Never.
I know you know now that you need another box, but I'd like to point out to everyone reading this that NEVER do you move or ship animals together with access to each other. Ever.
During stressful situations --which being driven in a vehicle, or shipped via any transportation method, absolutely can be-- any skinks, seemingly fine around each other under normal circumstances, can turn on each other.
So,
#1) always pack or keep skinks individually without any contact to each other during any shipping or moving.
#2) Always carefully quarantine your new skinks, away from your previous reptiles. Two weeks before introducing a new skink to a previous one is way too short. I have talked ad nauseum about this so enough for now, but everyone, please read up on quarantining before bringing any new reptile home. Even if you have no previous ones!
Re: First encounter - aggressive female...?
Posted: Thu May 05, 2016 7:27 am
by Wiwaxia
Re: First encounter - aggressive female...?
Posted: Thu May 05, 2016 10:02 am
by Susann
Welcome to the world of trying to sex BTS...

Re: First encounter - aggressive female...?
Posted: Thu May 05, 2016 11:30 pm
by Richard.C
Just to keep u guessing more,today i put a female in with a male,females had a couple of litters before and the male produced his first last season,the male was a tad interested but shes not quite ready yet,she bit him and went after him to
Re: First encounter - aggressive female...?
Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2016 9:15 pm
by alichamp
Regardless of sex, these skinks turned out to be
different species.