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Art360
01-22-2006, 09:11 AM
I've been looking, without much luck, for a website with info on tegu's behavior in the wild. I'm wanting to know different things like if they are solitary animals and if they prefer one mate or breed as they encounter a suitable mate. Do they sleep in the same nest or just wherever they are when it gets dark. Just random stuff but maybe I can closer replicate their natural tendencies.

Tupinambis, I'm curious with all those outdoor breeding pens, what kind of behaviors do you see. What are the signs of dominance between males? Have you ever kept two males with several females in a larger pen?

Lord_Duron
01-22-2006, 09:57 AM
Ya I hear you on that one Art
I too, have been interested in tegu's
behaviors in the wild. How
do males show dominance towards
another ? Along with other tiny question that
have been bothering me. However I to came
up empty handed on this search as well. I find
it strange on how we can find some much info
or even shows on discovery channel that document
the Monitor lizards life, but can find little or nothing on a tegu.
If someone can answer this question please do.

Teiidae
01-22-2006, 01:22 PM
Agama has a videotape/dvd for $20 bucks of Tegu's in the wild - I was considering buying this - Anyone seen it ? - Gonna move this to normal discussion :wink:

http://agamainternational.com/pages/tegus.html

Rick
01-22-2006, 05:36 PM
I've seen it. There isn't a lot of wild tegu footage. There are some small clips of a tegu laying around in the wild or a tegu running down a hole in the wild, but most of the video is of Berts tegus back years ago. There are some good mating/egg hatching scenes on there, but it's not a detailed documentary type video. It's more of a home video. The video is a bit jumpy. Probably from all of the taping and retaping. I think it needs to be updated/redone with a new digital camcorder.

Rick

tupinambis
01-23-2006, 01:47 AM
Well, some of the questions I can answer, others I cannot. Usually, when two adult males are kept in an enclosure, you will eventually only wind up with one. I've had some cases where a pair of males started out ok, went into hibernation, came out and kicked the living hell out of each other. I don't recommend it. About the only situation where I saw males cohabitating without killing each other is a group that were surgically altered in a study to remove their post-hepatic septum and it wound up seriously compromising their ability to breathe. I have heard of other people successfully keeping males together, but I wouldn't recommend trying so.

As for burrows, I can't honestly say as it wasn't the focus of my studies, but it is my impression that if they have reason to stick around a particular area (ie.good resources) then they tend to stick to a particular burrow. That being said, however, it strikes me that tegus are roamers and will take advantage of whatever burrows they come across. Under dire circumstances, they'll dig their own, but they definitely prefer to use what they find.

I think they are relatively solitary animals, naturally, and basically breed with any suitable mates they encounter. When they encounter other males, they normally square off, hissing and charging, trying to get a lock on their opponents' abdomenal area or a limb and then spin it off. Hence why the males have the large jowls, they use them as shields to try defending their vitals. Although these guys tend to show some social tendency in captivity, they are rather ambivalent to other tegus of similar size, but consider smaller ones to be meals.

Rick
01-23-2006, 03:26 AM
That may be the general case, but I find in captivity that feeding response and tameness holds a major factor in co-inhabitation.

I have two male argentine black and whites who live inside (outside during the summer) with two argentine black and white females, one female hybrid and one blue female and they all get along fine. None have a high feeding response and all are tame. I can toss a mouse in there and they will slowly get up, walk over.. smell it and the closest one will eat it. I can stick a tiny hatchling tegu in there, they will walk over.. smell it and walk away.

Now I don't recommend anyone else to do this as I do not want to be responsible if things don't go as well, but this is my experience with my tame captive bred tegus.

When my larger captive male wants to show dominance he will mock mount the smaller male and the smaller male will get pissed and storm off.

Rick

drfish
01-24-2006, 12:36 PM
I think we need to put a request into Steve 'The Man' Irwin to do a Crocodile Hunter show on them.

Anyone got his email address ? Lol.