GROOMING IN THE BROWN TREE SNAKE (BOIGA-IRREGULARIS)

Brown tree snakes, Boiga irregularis, exhibited an elevated frequency of jaw rubbing when a small quantity of petroleum jelly was placed on their lips. Jaw rubbing has the effect of removing foreign material fr om the lips, and it represents a behavior that cleans and maintains a particular part of the body surface. Although few such behaviors have been reported in reptiles, we suspect that many exist and simply have gone unnoticed because herpetologists have attached no theoretical sig nificance to them.