Categories: Outdoor

Do lizards eat other lizards? (Most People Don’t Know This)

Published by

James marcus

1 year ago

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If you are thinking about mixing lizards in captivity, you may have wondered if lizards eat other lizards. So, in today’s article I have laid out the detail you are looking for and more.

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Do Lizards eat other lizards? Yes, they do. Especially if a lizard is smaller in size, it could be eaten. This is only applicable to meant eating lizards. In some cases, such as the Bearded Dragons, they will eat their own offspring.

As you can see they do eat other lizards, but let’s look further. In particular you will discover what lizards can you actually mix together successfully; which lizards are the most domesticated and which lizards you can use a clever time share technique with.

What species of lizards eat other lizards?

There are types of lizards that will consider eating other lizards, but even their own species. For example, the Komodo dragon will actually eat its own live young, the babies have to do be on the alert in case an adult lizard tries to eat it.

As discussed earlier, another example of this is bearded dragons, they are classed as omnivores and have no problem eating their own baby lizards.

Can you mix lizards in captivity, as pets?

Generally speaking it’s not a good idea to mix lizards in captivity. I’m going to explain why this is. However, there are some rare exceptions, for example the Bearded Dragon, Anoles and geckos.

They can share but in this situation the tank has to be set up perfectly for them to live together in harmony, more detail on this later.

Bearded dragons and, in particular the females, can share together fine, however the males tend to fight. For that reason, it is not advised to mix the males together.

If you are considering mixing lizards, the best way to achieve this is to focus on their natural habitat and make sure that they all share the same common requirements.

For example, if the lizard is from Brazil and the humidity and Temperature requirements are the same, then you can mix them together because the requirements of the tank will be in harmony, are you with me?

An example of this is the blue-tongue skinks and bearded dragons originate from Australia, so you may see some synergy there. However, you still need to be careful that when you consider mixing these lizards together they are roughly the same size, because lizards tend to attack other lizards that are smaller than them.

Another tactic that you can consider using is mixing bearded dragons with other nocturnal lizards this way you can spread the activity based on the two different time preferences.

What I mean is while the nocturnal lizards are sleeping you can have activity from the bearded dragon and they can live in harmony on different timeframes.

What nocturnal lizards could be mixed with a bearded dragon?

Just to reiterate nocturnal actually means that the lizard will be awake at night. So, some examples of lizards that would fit this description would be the following: Geckos, in particular the Diplodactylus species and smooth knob tailed geckos (Nephrurus levis).

The smooth knob tailed gecko in particular has 14 species in existence, that fall into the nocturnal category. Bearing in mind that this species is very rare to find. They are a native of Australia. To give you an idea of the size they are roughly between 4 to 5.5 inches in length and they can live anything up to 10 years.

Should you be even be handling lizards?

One thing to consider is, lizards are not dogs, if they are handled they deem this as an attack. So, do not be surprised if a lizard attempts to bite you if you try to handle it.

You’re also advised to always wash your hands after you handle a lizard. Because you do not want to transfer any harmful bacteria to into your moth when you use your hands to eat after handling them.

I must confess there are some species of lizards that can get used to being handled in captivity, the more domesticated popular versions, for example that they Bearded Dragon. However, the Savannah monitor can also become accustomed to being handled.

Just one thing to note the Savannah monitor is a fairly large lizard, up to 5 feet in length, so it is not a popular choice as a pet, however you will find some people that parade these animals as a pet and will try to convince you that they are harmless, even if that isn’t the case.

The Day Gecko is a rare exception of lizard that is definitely one that you need to be careful to touch, this is mainly because of the fragility of their skin. In particular, if they are handled incorrectly you can easily tear the skin and cause them harm.

What is the correct way to handle lizards?

When it comes to handling lizards there are certain ways that you can do this to try and minimise the harm to the lizard and also stop yourself from having to physically handle them.

The first option is to simply scoop the lizard up into your hands but make sure that you’re careful. The second method is to actually use of glass or even a cup. This is achieved by covering the lizard with the glass and then sliding a piece of cardboard or paper beneath the glass to keep the lizard safe inside.

For lizards that are quite large this is obviously not going to work, because they are going to be substantially bigger than the actual glass itself. For this reason, you can consider handling these lizards by using both of your hands to do this. However, you need to be careful and insure that the lizard you are trying to handle is not dangerous.