Certainly not the greatest of photos but a rather interesting behavioural observation none the less.
While performing water dragon surveys today I came across this adult male that had killed and was beginning to consume one of the resident females within his territory. While cannibalism is nothing new in water dragons, it is typically adults and sub-adults feeding on hatchlings and young dragons. To my knowledge and that of the people in the lab I am assisting, cannibalism of another adult has not been recorded. Would be interesting to hear if anyone else has observed this sort of behaviour before in Australian agamids.
Also before people ask, I am 98% sure he killed her. I wasn't fortunate to see it, but I had someone come up and tell me one dragon had another by the head while I was recording a separate dragon. Thinking it was mating I quickly finished up recording the dragon I was examining and went over. By the time I got there he had crushed her head and it was over. When I collected her body for dissection it was still warm along with exhibiting damage to the tail further suggesting predation (or at the least mating gone horribly wrong).
I observed him for approximately 15 minutes afterwards were he then began to consume the head. During this period he also prevented another female from coming near the body along with pulling it further into the bushes.
Cheers, Cameron
While performing water dragon surveys today I came across this adult male that had killed and was beginning to consume one of the resident females within his territory. While cannibalism is nothing new in water dragons, it is typically adults and sub-adults feeding on hatchlings and young dragons. To my knowledge and that of the people in the lab I am assisting, cannibalism of another adult has not been recorded. Would be interesting to hear if anyone else has observed this sort of behaviour before in Australian agamids.
Also before people ask, I am 98% sure he killed her. I wasn't fortunate to see it, but I had someone come up and tell me one dragon had another by the head while I was recording a separate dragon. Thinking it was mating I quickly finished up recording the dragon I was examining and went over. By the time I got there he had crushed her head and it was over. When I collected her body for dissection it was still warm along with exhibiting damage to the tail further suggesting predation (or at the least mating gone horribly wrong).
I observed him for approximately 15 minutes afterwards were he then began to consume the head. During this period he also prevented another female from coming near the body along with pulling it further into the bushes.
Cheers, Cameron