Image from the Biodiversity Heritage Library.
Contributed by Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley.
| www.biodiversitylibrary.org
Transcription
Acre, H.
August 9 Went to the study site at 0800h w/ Billie, Dave, and
the Fogdens; partly cloudy. At 0822h Dave got
C. molossus ♂#13's sign from under a boulder ≈
5m NNW of yesterday. At 0826h C. molossus ♀/12
at the same site as yesterday, visible back into the
ledge in shade. At 0900h we found C. molossus ♂
#3 crawling in dense grass & acacia on the edge of
large rains ≈ 200m S SE of yesterday, on W side
of the big stream. The other channel of Silver Creek
now has 1 m high waterfalls, and the main one
runs muddy - more water here than I've ever seen.
At 0939h we walk up an embankment opposite the
ledge where C. molossus ♂#9 has been, got his
sign behind us and spotted him in copulation w/
a large ♀ under the edge of a ceity plant next
to the road! While we watch from a few m away
he periodically engages in forward jerks (those
are like fast japs) against her back, tongue flicks
and occasional tail movements. They face the
eastern morning sun, but it is still overcast. At
times his tail arches in a "?" shape - his is parallel
to the ground and he periodically lifts and lowers
it. His right hemipenis is inserted, the basal few
mm visible as swollen lavende. At 1017h we
saw him push his hemipenis further into her, and at
1031h I clearly saw him use a rather arthward
reverse rectilinear ascension to follow when she moves.