Should I separate aggressive hissers?

[ellalikesbugs]

I keep 2 male hissers (g. portentosa), one of which is very active and aggressive and the other of which tends to be relaxed and non aggressive. The aggressive one tends to go after and headbutt the relaxed one and I’m not sure if I should separate them or not? I know it is expected of male hissers to be territorial but I am wondering if it would improve quality of life for the relaxed roach to be separated from the aggressive one. 

An additional question- the relaxed roach is not able to climb as well as the aggressive one is. When I am holding him and tilt my hand, he tends to slip whereas my other roach is able to stay on my hand, climb glass, and stay upside down on many surfaces. Could this be due to age? I don’t know either of their ages for sure, I got them both as full adults. 

 

[Denthead]

Hey there!

What kind of hides do you have? Do you give them separate territories, i.e. bark, cork rounds, toilet paper rolls, etc? In my experience they'll typically leave each other alone if they have separate areas to lord over. They may still fight occasionally over the "best" territory, but if one is weaker than the other then he'll ordinarily get relegated to the "inferior" space and the fighting will stop. 

If that's not the problem, then you may want to separate them just to avoid the weaker male being stressed to an earlier grave. He'll never get actually hurt by this (unless he's pushed off a large hide and falls or something similar) but the stress may lower his lifespan a little bit.

It certainly sounds like he's older though - in my experience common hissers will lose the ability to climb as they get older. My oldest girls are the slowest, most docile, and most geriatric things I've ever seen. My oldest and favorite can barely grab onto my hand anymore and I'm expecting to find her belly-up any day now. Your weaker hisser is most likely older and getting pushed around by a younger dude. 

In short, their quality of life will be improved if you give them separate places to stick around. If you ever get any females, any male will tolerate them and they won't fight them at all. The one drawback is that any girl you get is likely already pregnant, and if you're keeping them at all warm then breeding WILL happen, and it may happen even if they're colder anyway.