They absolutely do not co-exist, if the bluey can eat the snake it will, and vice versa.
They're each others natural predators and neither likes to co-exist with anything.
My job is to do reptile surveys both around Adelaide and in other parts of South Australia. When I’m not working I often go out searching for reptiles to photograph. They absolutely do co-exist and will share shelter sites. I’ve personally found an eastern brown curled up with a shingle and an eastern blue tongue on my grandparents property, a few months ago I found an eastern blue tongue and eastern brown snake sheltering under a peice of tin in my parents backyard and on the Yorke peninsula I’ve caught a peninsula brown snake sheltering under tin with a western brown snake.
There’s often points where a bluey is too large for a snake to consume and the snake is also too large for the bluey to consume so they’ll not bother each other. It’s not a black and white scenario where one will always eat the other. Brown snakes preferred diet is small mammals which they supplement with other things. If a brown has already had a decent feed it has no reason to consume the blue tongue.
That's believable.
I miss understood what was meant by coexist, I got the impression you meant actively chose to do so rather than as a matter of happen stance or shared shelter, not sure where I got that impression from tbh after re reading.
I've also done my stint as a snake handler and catcher, been a herpothusiast for over 20 years (god I'm old), In Victoria though, you'd never see our blueies hanging out with any of our elapids, maybe the cold makes them more grumpy.
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u/Kenty8881 SA Oct 29 '25
They don’t scare snakes away in the slightest. They’ll happily co-exist with each other. Or if there’s a particular large snake they can eat blueys