The strength of two male carpet pythons was on display as they hung from the roof of a south-east Queensland home last week, battling it out for the affections of a nearby female.
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Footage of the males intertwined was sent through to Sunshine Coast Snake Catchers 24/7, who posted it to their Facebook page on Sunday night.
Snake catcher Max Jackson said it was an amazing display of strength that indicated the start of breeding season.
"Most snakes, particularly pythons, begin to move around a bit more to search for females at the start of breeding season," he said.
"When two males cross paths during this time, it is common for them to have combat, it is pretty gentle, just wrestling, it is a simple matter of overpowering the other one.
"This is a particularly impressive one, they are using so much stretch using their tails to hang there.
"There is a chance there might be a female in that roof, they must be able to smell a female around there somewhere."
Mr Jackson said it was easy to tell the pythons, who he estimated weighed about 15 kilograms each, were males fighting because of how much they were moving around.
"You can tell they are two males - when they mate they don't twist away like they are," he said.
"When two snakes mate, they can crawl up each other,
"They can stay still for up to two days, it is a pretty minimal movement for that period of time.
"There is lots of effort going into this, they generally only last about 10 minutes and mating is quite a lot longer than that."
Mr Jackson said he had never seen footage like it before.
"Generally they fight on the ground, but I guess maybe they started on the roof and started falling off," he said.
"Breeding season has definitely begun now, so this male-to-male combat may be a common sight throughout the coast over the next couple of months."
