Courtship Or Combat? Viral Video Of Entwined Snakes Sparks Social Media Debate

 - Sakshi Post

Two snakes entwined with each other, leaping a few feet off the ground and staying endlessly in that mood, is a sight to behold and makes for a hair-raising spectacle. This is often mistaken for either the ‘romance of the slithery creatures’ or the ‘dance of snakes in courtship’.

The truth is, more often than not, breath-taking videos of entwined snakes invariably feature two males that fight it out for territorial dominance and most importantly to earn the right to court a female in sight.

One such video shared by IFS officer Susanta Nanda is currently going viral on social media, evoking ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ from many netizens.  “Rat snakes combat for dominance. Two male fighting to define territory & defend their mate,” was how he captioned the video.

But as is their wont, some of the users found only romance in it, driven by their misconceptions while glossing over the fierce combat. They felt that it’s only a dance of romance between a male and female snake and that there is no dearth of such videos which they commonly come across on the Internet. It needed a further clarification from the officer that it’s a fallacy to consider this as a sign of romance. In reality, it’s a fierce combat of two male snakes over a female, which is what happens across the animal kingdom in most of the species.

Rat snakes, which are non-venomous and harmless for the mankind, prey on rodents for survival.

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