An Interesting Account of Tegus at The National Zoo

[carcharios]

I was reading a paper I found online about tegus kept at the national zoo in the 70's and the author said that there are accounts of Tegus remaining fully submerged for 90 minutes with no perceivable trauma, etc. I thought this was pretty interesting. The author said that the subordinate males sometimes would seek water to escape the dominant breeding male. Anyway, thought some of you would like to know that fun fact.

 

[Pikey]

my li'l girl Harley i've seen her soak under water in their pool for a good 30+ mins before. 1st time she did it a got a little scared and pulled her up, but now i just let her

 

[Guest]

Huge NecroBump, I apologize, but can anyone provide a link to this 'article'?

 

[Jefroka]

Yeah, that's a hard one to buy without seeing the actual accredited article. 90 minutes sounds like a death sentence for most animals submerged for that long.


...Jefroka

 

[JohnMatthew]

Maybe the study was done on the "crocodile tegu":

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[jamelyn77]

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Publications/ScientificPublications/pdfs/932280b2-799b-4694-a311-0a43de1308cc.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Publications/ ... 1308cc.pdf</a><!-- m -->

out of curiousity i looked for and found this ... maybe this is source? although they say 30 minutes here and state that in the 1940's some guy submerged a young tegu in a alcohol solution of some sort for 90 minutes.. but that doesnt seem real concrete... idk and why would you do such a thing?

 

[Toby_H]

Keep in mind we are discussing cold blooded animals here. There metabolism rate is directly related to their body temperature. So it seems quite rational that they could 'hold their breath' for extended periods in cooler waters...

As for how long... I have no clue...

 

[carcharios]

That is the correct article. If you read it well, it does say that a tegu was submerged for 90 minutes in an alcohol bath. Around that passage, the author also mentions that a tegu was submerged in water for 30 minutes. When they say submerged, I took that to mean totally under water. Maybe I read it wrong?