Results 1 to 2 of 2

Thread: Urgent! Strange behaviour.

  1. #1

    Default Urgent! Strange behaviour.

    This evening I went to take my Argentine Black and White Tegu, Oreo out of his tank, so that I could mist and he had a serious freakout. I'd picked him up fine, off of his basking spot where he'd been napping. But as I turned and passed him to my boyfriend to hold him, he suddenly jumped and ran about, trying desperately to bury himself under my boyfriend. I managed to get a hold of him again and return him to his tank, where he immediately ran under his hut. I lifted it off of him and he was curled up. I thought that I must've just somehow startled him, even though he'd never reacted like that before. However when I went to pick him up again, he startled. Almost like he hadn't seen my hand coming. I moved my hand slower and tried petting his side only to have him start pushing himself up on his front legs strangely and move back a bit. Acting like he was completely terrified of me. At this point I was pretty freaked out for him and my boyfriend had to take over trying to reassure Oreo, who just continued moving about, sort of waving side to side and pushing himself up on his front legs. He also kept looking about, but not looking like he was seeing things. At this point I was getting ready to call the vet, but Oreo was slowly seeming to return to normal, or close too. So we decided to try again to take him out of his tank. He did fine as my boyfriend picked him up and moved him to the bed, but the moment he was down he was running. Right off the bed, big drop for a little guy, luckily though he fluked out and managed not to get hurt from that. It was at this point that we decided to get a hold of a vet and get him ready to potentially rush him to the vets office. Unfortunately with how late it is, the only vets open are emergency ones with no reptile experience and Oreo had started calming down again in the container we'd moved him into to transport so we thought it best not to stress him more for what would likely be an unhelpful visit.

    So now we're turning to you guys for any help you could possibly provide. We're both new reptile owners and we know a Tegu is probably pretty daring, but we fell in love with the little guy and wanted to have a lizard that would get large eventually. The only thing that has changed in diet or anything for Oreo today had been that I fed him some mealworms I picked up in hopes of getting him some worthwhile nutrients because he hasn't been eating enough of his dehydrated diet and I can't just keep feeding him grapes. He's only a few weeks old, we've had him for two now and he's about 9 inches long.

    Thank you for any help, it's greatly appreciated

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Oct 2007
    Location
    San Antonio,TX
    Posts
    9,505

    Default

    Hi Batsong. Welcome to our Tegu forum family and congrats on getting Oreo. For right now I wouldn't worry to much on how he is acting. It's normal for a lot of baby Tegus to be scared. How and where do you feed Oreo ? Have you tried any fresh food like fish filets ( salmon, tilapia, tuna, cod ), chicken/beef liver, ground turkey/beef, pinky mice or other fruits, hard boiled eggs ( cooled down and without the shell ) ? You can grind up the egg shells and add them to the ground meat for the extra calcium. Do you dust the food with some calcium and vitamin powder ? Here are some video of some tricks that I used on all of our Tegus and our black throat monitor and it worked very well. I did my shirt trick with them from day one and they calmed down very fast. Sometimes when Tegus are stressed out they will not eat.

    The Tegus feel safe when they get to hide. Now you are the hiding place. They also like the warmth of the body.



    Rich is not how much you have, or where you are going, or what you are.Rich is who you have beside you.

    Our videos :

    http://www.youtube.com/user/txrepgirl

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •