Quote Originally Posted by Kaorte View Post
It would be great if there was some sort of experiment or study done to see if there was in fact dominance, but I am certainly not going to house my snakes together just to find out.

I am going to guess most people who have enough snakes to do this type of experiment wouldn't want to.

Just a few days ago there was a thread where someone was keeping two hatchlings together. One was eating perfectly fine, but the other had not taken a meal. He separated them and within 2 days the non-eater started eating again. To me this points to "dominance".

As for breeding, yes the smaller males can breed the larger female.
And an issue with the pecking order would be the ONLY possibility that this snake may have not been eating while housed with another?

It's age, how much yolk it may or may not have still had, what food was offered and the manner in which said food was given, I suppose none of those things could have had any bearing whatsoever on that little guys firing up.

Were you there to see that both babies were treated identically? I ask not to say I doubt your word, I have no reason to. I ask because from what I have seen once a snake is singled out for special attention, like the one that was not eating, they are often treated differently than those who need no extra attention. Be it an extra offering of food, different lighting, temps, humidity, duration of offer, many variables come in to play simply because that snake "needs" extra care. It's not a bad thing, but if both were treated exactly the same and they reacted exactly the same then there may be grounds for a theory that X equals Y. But, if you don't know they were treated exactly the same, your theory is faulted before you have begun and any results will also be invalid.