Male-male combat in the large whip snake, Dolichophis jugularis (Serpentes: Colubridae)

The male-male combat dance is prevalent among snakes but is previously unreported in Dolichophis jugularis. Here, we present data from video footage of 13 instances of the male-male combat dance in Dolichophis jugularis. The large number of observations in this sample enables a more detailed study of the parameters of the combat dance in this species than the small number of recorded observations in other species has allowed. In this species, the combatants coil around each other and lift their heads high, and each tries to push the other’s head downward. The phylogenetic presence of these behaviors among snakes indicates that coiling, high head-lifting, and downward pushing are ancestral behaviors for male-male combat in macrostomatan snakes that are retained in D. jugularis. The videos used in this study were collected from social media and demonstrate that social media can be useful in collecting data for scientific studies.