# Fat tegus??



## VARNYARD (Nov 5, 2007)

Someone was asking me about why tegus are so fat, I will try to expain it here.

As for the size of tegus, I think people confuse them with monitors too often. Tegus are much larger built, the jowls are always larger in the males and are 100% normal, however, not found as large in the Colombian tegus. 
Take a greyhound, should a St. Bernard look like a Grey hound? Or even a pit viper, they should not be as thin as a ribbon snake. No they are two different animals, as with the tegus, they are heavier built than any of the monitor species.
They are also in no way related to monitors at all, they are in a totally different family; they are related to whiptails and racerunners. I hope this helps in understanding them better.


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## greentriple (Nov 5, 2007)

That may all be true, but there is the whole thing about our domestic Tegus being couch potatoes as opposed to wild Tegus being thinner or in better shape. Monitors are also much more active than Tegus, bigger calorie burners. 

Maybe one of us should design a Tegu treadmill  or we could get our lizards into Jenny Craig - it would be good publicity, look what it did for Fergie and the chick from Cheers.


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## DaveDragon (Nov 8, 2007)

Our female Blue is a bit chunky. She was living in a 125 gallon tank for the year before we got her. Who knows what before that. We've got her down 0.1 lb in the past month.


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## greentriple (Nov 8, 2007)

OK, maybe Jenny Craig is too much. Tegu Weight Watches has got to be better.

Got to get those Tegus working out. A little cardio in the AM before they eat will burn more fat that a late afternoon workout after a good meal. Let's hit those reserves and lean out people!!! :twisted: 

Oops, sorry the Triathlon training is getting too much water in my brain. :shock:


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## tegulevi (Nov 8, 2007)

i am in the works of reformulating my feeding regimen to help this lazy mentality. its going to take like a year t put it into effect as i have to breed all my own food. im goint to a twice a day diet, to mimmick foraging. rodents will be vastly decreased in this plan. i will make use of crawdads, snails, roaches, chicks, worms. etc. small protions twice a day. once in the early AM once in the evening. it will take a lot of devotion on my part and i hope im up to the challenge. hopefully this will keep them in the forage mode for the summer and extremely active. wish me luck


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