Watch male cottonmouth snakes face off in ‘wrestling match’ in Georgia swamp
Two male snakes were seen thrashing about as they battled for dominance in a Georgia swamp.
Video posted to YouTube shows the reptiles’ slender bodies entangling during the recent face-off in a Bulloch County creek.
“It’s basically a wrestling match for the rights to mate with a local female,” Matthew Moore, a field technician for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Resources Division, said last week in a newsletter.
While others might shy away from fighting snakes, Moore said he had been searching for cottonmouths on Sept. 5 and welcomed the chance to film the battle that he stumbled upon.
Cottonmouths, also known as water moccasins, are “semi-aquatic” snakes, often found in swamps, wetlands and floodplains across the Southeast. The snakes are venomous but don’t hurt each other when they try to establish dominance, wildlife officials said.
“While most snakes mate in spring, the prime time for cottonmouths and other pit vipers is late summer through early fall,” the Georgia Department of Natural Resources said in its newsletter. “That’s when males vying for females tangle in dance-like tussles, intertwining, rising up to gain advantage and trying repeatedly to push the other snake down.”
Moore captured that repetitive sequence in his 8-minute long video, which he said shows “’round 2’ of the fight.” He was near a cypress tree when one snake approached the other, initiating the battle in Bulloch County, roughly 50 miles northwest of Savannah.
It’s not the first time Moore has come across one of these matches. He has seen several over the years and said the larger snake usually wins and chases off the loser.
“Cottonmouths, due to folklore and anecdotal stories, are unfortunately perceived by many people to be aggressive snakes that will go out of their way to bite people,” Moore told McClatchy News in an email. “I have had literally hundreds of close proximity encounters with Cottonmouths and I have never had one attempt to chase or bite me. They deserve to be respected and left alone rather than feared and mistreated.”
Cottonmouth snakes are pit vipers that can grow to about 4 feet long. In Georgia, they can be found in most areas outside the northeastern part of the state, according to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.
“Older adults are often dark and solid-colored whereas the juveniles are brightly patterned with a sulphur yellow tail tip that they wiggle to attract prey,” the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory at the University of Georgia said on its website.
This story was originally published September 29, 2021 at 2:06 PM with the headline "Watch male cottonmouth snakes face off in ‘wrestling match’ in Georgia swamp."
