Alligator Lizards!

[nemo66]

i dont have a alligator lizard. but what i would realy like is a caiman lizard XD i love how they have caiman like scales on their tails.

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just wish i could actually afford one. btw that is a relay nice lizard you have there Marlene =)

 

[Marlene]

Thank you! Caiman lizards are pretty darn cool! I would love to have one when I get a bigger place to live.

 

[isdrake]

Out of curiosity, is it legal to take animals from the wild and keep them as pets in USA?

 

[nemo66]

Out of curiosity, is it legal to take animals from the wild and keep them as pets in USA?

i think it all depends on witch animal you plan on capturing from the wild. most lizards and snakes i think you can. but lizards like the horned lizard are illegal to take from the wild cuz of their low population in some areas. dont take my word as gold though, i would check with state and federal laws before housing a wild animal.

 

[Marlene]

You are only allowed to take two alligator lizards, otherwise, it would be illegal. I'm not sure of any other animals though.

 

[AB^]

It is 2 with a fishing license in CA. You're techincally supposed to have a propagation permit to breed them as well.

 

[AB^]

hmm I thought i had put something about Gator lizards on this site before

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[Marlene]

It is 2 with a fishing license in CA. You're techincally supposed to have a propagation permit to breed them as well.

I almost completely forgot about that permit... I haven't researched breeding reptile laws in quite a long time.

 

[isdrake]

Isdrake: She ate in front of people, walked on them, sniffed them, and seemed to enjoy it all.

There are studies that proves that reptiles become stressed by handling. And therefor I'm pretty sure that a trip so school is stressful too.

 

[Marlene]

It probably was at first, despite the lack of any stress signs, but she must've become used to it quickly. I know that many reptiles become stressed when being handled, especially around many people, I have quite a few reptiles that hate it, so they get to be at home reptiles only. My Savannah absolutely hates to be handled and becomes stressed very easily, it's been a long and slow road trying to tame it.

My alligator lizard hasn't been around large masses of people in a couple of years. We took a trip to the post office once about two weeks ago, and she did just fine. She crawled into my sleeve and poked her head out. She fell asleep like that while I grabbed my tax forms. Had I have brought the baby alligator lizard, it would have defecated all over the place and freaked out, which is why I leave him at home. I know which of my reptiles become stressed easily and which don't.

 

[Marlene]

hmm I thought i had put something about Gator lizards on this site before

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Very nice caresheet!

 

[isdrake]

Reptiles will become stressed even if they don't show any obvious signs of if. There are studies that shows that both their heart rate and body temperature rises then they are being touched or handled.

 

[skippy]

do you have links to these studies? i would be interested to read them.

 

[isdrake]

I don't have any links but I do have some info that will help you find them.

Cabanac M and Gosselin F (1993). Emotional fever in the lizard Callopistes maculatus. Animal behaviour 46:200-202.

Cabanac C and Cabanac M (2000). Heart rate response to gentle handling of frog and lizard. Bahavioural processes 52:89-95

 

[skippy]

Three teid lizards were used in an experiment to investigate a possible rise in temperature due to handling, or emotional fever, and the results indicate that these lizards are indeed susceptible to such a temperature rise. The orgin of the fever was backed by the fact that the animals' temperatures fell to control levels in under two hours following handling. The results of this experiment are similar to results of a similar experiment involving rats.
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Heart rate was counted telemetrically in lizards (Iguana iguana) and frogs (Rana catesbeiana and Rana pipiens) to estimate their response to gentle 1-min handling. The animals were kept at steady body temperatures of ca. 28Ã?â??Ã?°C (lizards), and 24Ã?â??Ã?°C (frogs). Handling increased the heart rate of lizards from ca. 70 to 110 beats per min immediately during and after handling and this tachycardia decreased in ca. 10 min. Similar handling did not modify significantly the frogsÃ?¢ââ??‰â??¢ heart rates. Although the absence of a response to mild stress is not synonymous with the absence of emotion, the absence of handling-tachycardia in frogs and its presence in lizards (as well as in mammals and birds), together with the emotional fever in mammals, birds, and reptiles, but not frogs or fish as reported in the literature, might suggest that Ã?¢ââ??¬Ã?Å?emotionalÃ?¢ââ??‰â??¢ response to stress emerged in phylogeny between amphibians and reptiles.
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this is all i could find using the info you provided. it doesn't seem all that conclusive to me though. perhaps the complete study offers a more complete hypothesis but these little tidbits aren't convincing me and i'm not about to pay over $30 to read the full article :grno

 

[skippy]

if anyone wants to pay though, here are the links:
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[Marlene]

I would love to read the full article I just don't have the money right now. What I would like to know is, how often those iguanas were handled prior to the studies, and if they were even all that tame. I would also like to know if they used any other lizards, aside from just three iguanas.


I have answered my previous question, I do believe. It seems like they tested some Sudan Plated Lizards as well. They mentioned the methods used to take their temperatures, an indwelling cloacal thermocouple taped to the tail of the lizard and telemeters implanted into the peritoneal cavity. They had to disregaurd that study for which caused stress fever because they had a preexisting bacterial infection.

All of the info stated above can be found towards the end of this article:
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I still have no doubt in my mind that my lizards are stressed at first, but I do believe that they get used to it. My tegu actually walks up to me, crawls on my hand and up my arm just to rest on my shoulder. My alligator lizard does the same, although she crawls into my shirt, rather than onto my shoulder. My two big boas are used to my boyfriend and I, along with small groups of people. My red tail gets stressed out around more than just five or six people, where as my boyfriends dumerils acts as though being surrounded by children is a daily happening. Of course the dumerils grew up with a bunch of people around her at all times. The person that he bought her from lived in an apartment and always had her out on the lawn within the apartment, so kids and his neighbours would come over and pet it. My Savannah, however, is always stressed, sadly. She hates humans, despite me just leaving my hand in her cage for about two hours a day and me taking her out of the cage and gently holding her for about a half an hour every other day (when I held her everyday, our training went in reverse). I hope I don't sound like I'm getting upset, I'm enjoying the new information and wish to read more on it! So if anyone does find more info, please let me know.

 

[skippy]

i had a 6 foot black throat that would, during free roam time, climb up in my lap and rest there while i watched tv. if i was reading on the other hand, he would drape himself across my shoulders and smell my ear. i had my mother take care of him once when i was out of the country and warned her that he would probably want some affection when she stopped by to feed him. still, she was surprised when he climbed into her lap :mrgreen: fortunately, she's become fairly used to odd animals having raised me.

IME some reptiles become stressed and some actually seem to enjoy human contact, like tegus. the studies referred to are pretty narrowly focused. with only a couple species and only a few subjects of each species there really isn't enough data to make any but the most general observations that really aren't that indicative of what really goes on in their scaly little heads

 

[Marlene]

i had a 6 foot black throat that would, during free roam time, climb up in my lap and rest there while i watched tv. if i was reading on the other hand, he would drape himself across my shoulders and smell my ear. i had my mother take care of him once when i was out of the country and warned her that he would probably want some affection when she stopped by to feed him. still, she was surprised when he climbed into her lap :mrgreen: fortunately, she's become fairly used to odd animals having raised me.

IME some reptiles become stressed and some actually seem to enjoy human contact, like tegus. the studies referred to are pretty narrowly focused. with only a couple species and only a few subjects of each species there really isn't enough data to make any but the most general observations that really aren't that indicative of what really goes on in their scaly little heads

They are quite a bit like people, no one reptile behaves exactly the same as another. With all of the lizards I've had/rescued, they all had their own personalities. And, yes, these studies seem narrowly studied, and I wish I could pay to see their methods and if they did continue the study beyond just three iguanas and a handful of sudans. My curiosity does get the best of me at times, I've been searching google for more info.

 

[Marlene]

I have a three new pictures of Alli! One has the baby in it too!

Her takin' a bath, I typically only soak her in the sink, but the bathtub was just cleaned, so I figured I'd let her exercise in the water for a little while.

Her and the baby boy, he has a full original tail, and quite a bit of it extends past this picture

Alli falling asleep in one of her odd positions.