# Wild Dietary Studies of Adult Tegus?



## Guest (Mar 7, 2011)

Does anyone know where I can find a study or article on the dietary habits of wild ADULT Argentine tegus? I found a study that was on juveniles but obviously an adult's diet would be different due to their size I'd assume. 

Thanks


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## chelvis (Mar 7, 2011)

Varnyard posted this a while back, its not really an article just some fun facts about tegus. 

<!-- l --><a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.tegutalk.com/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=403&hilit=wild+tegu#axzz1FtNFz1J3" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">viewtopic.php?f=65&t=403&hilit=wild+tegu#axzz1FtNFz1J3</a><!-- l -->


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## Guest (Mar 7, 2011)

Yeah, I've read that. I was just wondering if there were any more elaborate studies?


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## Strange_Evil (Mar 8, 2011)

I found this on about two week old thread,

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.ecoevo.com.br/pesquisadores/ivan_sazima/dietofjuveniletegulizarTupinambismerianae_2002.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.ecoevo.com.br/pesquisadores/ ... e_2002.pdf</a><!-- m -->


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## Guest (Mar 8, 2011)

Thanks. That's the article I read before but I'm going to reread it.


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## Guest (Mar 8, 2011)

I found this:

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://issuu.com/maffei.fabio/docs/tupinambis_merianae" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://issuu.com/maffei.fabio/docs/tupinambis_merianae</a><!-- m -->


It states:

"They are considered to have a generalist diet that includes eggs, fruits, invertebrates, and small vertebrates, among which anurans appear prominent..."

Start feeding those frog legs!


Found this too:

"My observations of black and white tegus in Venezuela leads me to believe that, at least in llanos habitat, these lizards consume far more large insects, turtle eggs and frogs than rodents. Mammals are taken when available, mainly as carrion or unearthed rodent nests."
- Feeding Monitors and Tegus (I don't agree with feeding canned food like this site recommends)


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## chelvis (Mar 8, 2011)

"Diet of the Argentine Black & White tegu 
According to Achaval (1977), its food consists mainly of insects, snails, bird eggs, fruits, and vegetables. Dr. Cei (1986) writes that this lizard eats birds, small mammals, insects, mollusks, fish, amphibians, and fruit. Claudia Mercolli and Alberto Yanosky describe the food more extensively in the Journal of the British Herpetocultural Society (1994, vol. 4). They examined the stomach contents of 70 Argentine black and white tegus (bought from hide-hunters) in northeastern Argentina. They found that 66.8 % of the stomach contents consisted of vegetable matter; 12.9 % were invertebrates; and 20.3 % were vertebrates. This stands in contrast to what herpetoculturists tend to feed their tegus: almost 100% rodents and eggs. Dr. Fred Frye (1981) warns that the overuse of infertile bird eggs, such as readily available chicken eggs, can result in a lack of biotin."

i'm haing a hard time finding the cited articles, i'll hae t log onto the school data base.


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## Guest (Mar 8, 2011)

Thanks for the reply regardless.


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## Chuey (Apr 10, 2012)

My fiance Ashley who frequesnt this board as well, asked the BH Society for a copy of the Mercolli and Yanovsky article and surprisingly they sent the 1994 article. Can I send it to a moderator to post up somewhere so that it can be downloaded easily? That said anyone knoe where can get fertilized chick eggs?


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## laurarfl (Apr 10, 2012)

Fertilized duck eggs can usually be found at an Asian market. The incidence of biotin deficiency from the feeding of raw eggs would require the daily feeding of raw eggs as was occurring with monitor owners feeding ab abundance of eggs. Avidin is still present in fertilized eggs. It is used up as the chick develops. So you need not only a fertilized egg, but a well-developed egg. At that point, you might as well feed chicks. 

Here is more data from the FWC bioprofile:

Diet information 
Tegus have heterodont dentition as adults, with pointed teeth in the front for seizing prey and molariform teeth in the back of their jaws (Dessem 1985). It has been suggested that these blunt posterior teeth are used for crushing hard prey items (Presch 1974, Rieppel 
1980), but development of these teeth when tegus weigh 600–750 g (1.32–1.65 lb) does not seem to be correlated with a change in diet to eating hard food items such as mollusks (Dessem 1985). The posterior teeth of the mostly insectivorous juveniles are tricuspid and pointed (Dessem 1985, Norman 1987). Tegus flick their forked tongues to detect and discriminate between food and nonfood odors (Yanosky et al. 1993). The species is omnivorous, feeding on vertebrates, invertebrates, and plant matter, including fruit, seeds, leaves, stems, flowers, and honey. According to Cei (1986), it eats birds, small mammals, insects, mollusks, fishes, amphibians, and fruit. Achaval (1977) claims its food consists mainly of insects, snails, bird eggs, fruits, and vegetables. The stomach 
contents of adult T. merianae in Argentina contained, by volume, 66.8 % plant material (primarily fruits), 13.4 % invertebrates, and 20.0 % vertebrates (Mercolli and Yanosky 1994; Table 1). In Brazil, stomach contents, by volume, consisted of 29.0% plant material, 27.8% ants, 27.5% vertebrates, 13.1% mollusks, and minor amounts of 
orthopterans, coleopterans, phasmids, and millipedes (Colli et al. 1998). Another study in Brazil found plant material (Vitis and Philodendron fruits), arachnids, coleopterans, large land snail fragments, orthopterans, caterpillars, and rodents (Milstead 1961). Stomach contents, by volume, of juvenile (8.7–29.9 cm SVL) T. merianae in Brazil consisted of 47.7% invertebrates (mostly spiders, othopterans, cockroaches, and 
coleopterans), 31.9% plant material (mostly 1 banana), and 15.5% vertebrates (mostly 1 rodent; Table 1); juveniles were also observed feeding on a nine-banded armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus) and house sparrow (Passer domesticus) carcass (Kiefer and Sazima 2002). Fruits or seeds were found in only 2 of 30 juvenile stomachs containing food (Kiefer and Sazima 2002), whereas fruits or seeds were found in 62 of 70 adult stomachs (Mercolli and Yanosky 1994). Tegus are predominantly terrestrial; all fruits eaten belonged to trees with fruits that fall to the ground when ripe, and the birds eaten were chicks of the ground-nesting tinamou (Mercolli and Yanosky 1994). Tegu concentrations are found where ripe Philodendron fruit or fish discarded by fishermen are present (Milstead 1961). Based on food items, tegus apparently enter shallow water to prey upon fish, crabs, and snails (Mercolli and Yanosky 1994). Other items eaten by Tupinambis spp. include mushrooms, frogs, turtle eggs, reptiles, and carrion (Donadío and Gallardo 1984, Dessem 1985, Escalona and Fa 1998, Kiefer and Sazima 2002, Silva and Hillesheim 2004, Toledo et al. 2004). In captivity, tegus fed on 30 species of fruits 
from southeastern Brazil ranging in diameter from 0.81 to 10.0 cm, including large fruit adapted for dispersal by large mammals (Castro and Galetti 2004). Seed retention in the gut ranged from 22–24 hr to 43–44 hr, and tegus may be important seed dispersers in the Neotropics (Castro and Galetti 2004). Hungry hatchlings will sometimes cannibalize 
smaller, weaker siblings, and adults will eat their own eggs and young (St. Pierre, pers. comm.). If given a choice, adults are more prone to feed on small prey items like insects than large items like dead adult rats (St. Pierre, pers. comm.). A tegu breeder fed his T. merianae rats, turkey meat, eggs, bread, cat food, dog food, pies, tomatoes, cantaloupes, fish, grapes, pears and pitless cherries (Langerwerf and Paris 1998). 11 Table 1. Most common (by number or percent volume) food items for 70 adult T. merianae from northeastern Argentina (Mercolli and Yanosky 1994) and 30 juveniles from southeastern 
Brazil (Kiefer and Sazima 2002). 



There is also a nice table of data, but I can't post here in the clean format.


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## dragonmetalhead (Apr 10, 2012)

I haven't had luck with the canned tegu food. Kodo doesn't seem to show much interest in it. None of my friends who have tegus or monitors use it either, but I'm not bashing the product.


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## laurarfl (Apr 10, 2012)

Blech. Would you like for me to bash it for you? heh heh


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## teguboy77 (Apr 10, 2012)

laurarfl said:


> Fertilized duck eggs can usually be found at an Asian market. The incidence of biotin deficiency from the feeding of raw eggs would require the daily feeding of raw eggs as was occurring with monitor owners feeding ab abundance of eggs. Avidin is still present in fertilized eggs. It is used up as the chick develops. So you need not only a fertilized egg, but a well-developed egg. At that point, you might as well feed chicks.
> 
> Here is more data from the FWC bioprofile:
> 
> ...


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## got10 (Apr 10, 2012)

laurarfl said:


> Blech. Would you like for me to bash it for you? heh heh



Ha Ha


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## dragonmetalhead (Apr 10, 2012)

laurarfl said:


> Blech. Would you like for me to bash it for you? heh heh



Lol. I was just trying to avoid turning the thread into a big, nasty, unnecessary argument. People on this forum are very passionate and opinionated, which is absolutely wonderful, but I've seen too many other threads blow up from innocent comments like mine so I was just trying to cover my backside.


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## laurarfl (Apr 11, 2012)

I was just kidding. And I know what you mean.


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## teguboy77 (Apr 11, 2012)

laurarfl said:


> Fertilized duck eggs can usually be found at an Asian market. The incidence of biotin deficiency from the feeding of raw eggs would require the daily feeding of raw eggs as was occurring with monitor owners feeding ab abundance of eggs. Avidin is still present in fertilized eggs. It is used up as the chick develops. So you need not only a fertilized egg, but a well-developed egg. At that point, you might as well feed chicks.
> 
> Here is more data from the FWC bioprofile:
> 
> ...


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## teguboy77 (Apr 11, 2012)

Great information,when i was keeping tegus,i would alternate there diet like roaches,quail,mice,grapes,tilapia,ground turkey,chicken peeps and it seemed to really work well for my tegus.


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