Question: Greedy newt

[eminem]

I have been feeding my newts with tweezers lately and both of the newts were going for the same food so the one newt bit the other! this has never happened before to me. they are the same species Chinese fire bellied newts, could he just have been very hungry? it seemed to startle the other newt and he went into hiding, actually I thought i saw this before when they weren't eating. they are both males could this be a territorial thing? do i need a bigger cage? when it comes time to eat should i put the problematic newt in a separate container?

 

[evut]

This is normal - they just get very excited when they smell food and bite whatever is near. All my newts (also non-aggressive species) do it. Sometimes it looks pretty bad when they start twisting each other's limbs but I've never seen injury. It would be a good idea to keep an eye on the shy newt to make sure it gets enough to eat which should be easy as you are tweezer feeding.

 

[AngieD]

We have seen ours nipping each other by accident at feeding time, don't worry about it unless it turns into a full scale brawl! One or 2 have even tried to bite our fingers at feeding time