Found a garter in need of help?

[RedSidedSPR]

I've had babies chomp down on eachother. Several times. Simply because he smelled food.. smell is mostly all they go by with food.

[d_virginiana]

Interesting observations. Snakes definitely aren't well understood creatures. Though, ditto to what everyone else is saying about the catfood/canned fish. Not a great food choice.

I've also found the best way to get garters to accept pinkie mice or in the case of the bigger garters, pinky rats, is to first make sure to introduce pinkies when the snake is really hungry and less picky!! , scent live pinkies by rubbing earthworms on the pinkies. In a couple of cases I've wrapped an earthworm around a pinky & then offered the pinky to the snake to get the snake started eating the pinky. Otherwise, the scent of earthworm combined with the movement of the live pinky should motivate a hungry garter to eat the pinky.

Another interesting tactic to get snakes on mice is to use organ meat. I got my new baby from feeder fish to unscented pinky bits in one feeding by cutting out the liver and offering it to her. I've noticed my adult also consistently prefers red organ meat if I chop a pinky and leave it for him. I've never heard of anyone else doing this (it is kind of gross...) but I think it's interesting.

Another interesting behavior I've noted is that when a mother garter has given birth, when I go to feed her earthworms she is very careful to go over the worm thoroughly before eating it to make sure it's not a baby snake. I've never had an adult garter make any attempt to eat baby garters.

My adult male does that as well, and I know he isn't concerned about it being a baby snake . I think it's just a way of investigating what they're about to put in their mouths. An eastern will probably never actively try to cannibalize, but that doesn't mean it'd be safe to dip a baby in fish juice and put it in a tank with an adult. Also, as concinnusman said, the female garter would've known another snake was around before she got to the point of investigating. My snakes can tell when another garter is brought into the room even if they're in different enclosures.

What have others of you who keep multiple garters together observed in your garters, as to evidence of social behaviors & organized social structure with one individual clearly being dominant over the others?

Sometimes if people are looking for something they can see it even when it's not there. I believe garters are fairly 'social' as far as the term can be applied to snakes. Both in the wild and captivity they seem to feel safer around other garters, but I still don't believe this is on par with any sort of organized social structure. The 'dominant-submissive' behavior you talked about is likely due to the smaller, shyer snakes wanting to avoid getting bitten than out of social deference. I really do love my snakes; they have individual personalities, and there's way more to them than I'd ever thought there would be before actually working with them, but they're still snakes. Their brains don't have the capacity for that level of social organization. Don't get me wrong; I don't think their mindless automatons or anything, but they don't come anywhere near animals like dogs or wolves when it comes to empathy and society. That's why my snakes are much loved pets, but my dog is my best friend.