56K views · 559 reactions | This is Buzz, our Gopher Snake,...

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