Sound up! Gopher Snakes hissing can be intimidating when they feel threatened!! Today I relocated this big fella from a neighbors home who isn’t so fond of this type of rodent patrol. When I tried to encourage him to switch directions back into the desert he started with his defense mechanisms of hissing and flattening his head. They even mimic Rattlesnakes by vibrating its tail. He had a weird way of saying, thank you… | Jeremy Johnson Photography

We thought these two gopher snakes were mating, but it turned out to be just our dirty minds. After some scientists among our Instagram following commented that this looked more like two males, we shared the video with UCSB Prof. Sam Sweet, who has more focused experience with local reptiles (our curator is a generalist, who—as noted in our previous post—has to do duty on all vertebrates, from the tiniest frogs to the largest whales). Prof. Sweet said “It's male combat. The two snakes are almost