New Tegu Concerns

[gabbytheginger]

I just recently got my tegu. I am not sure if it is a regular b&w or one of the big boys. I got him on the 7th and was told that he was around 2 months-he was about 13 inches, little over when I got him. I think he's on the small side, and I don't know if he is just younger than I think or if he wasn't being properly fed. He is 15 inches now and his body has definitely thickened up. How large were your tegus when they were this young? *I feed every day-bugs and meat mixtures*
UNBOXING:

After having him just about 2 weeks:

He has chubbed up a little more since these photos as well.

 

[Roadkill]

These guys come out of an egg that's about 1-1.5 inches in length. Exactly how big do you expect it to be after 2 months? We need to stop thinking "big is good", because this is actually bad. Getting big fast is usually done at the cost of a healthy skeleton. There's nothing wrong with animals taking longer to grow. Forcing them to grow rapidly with lots of protein usually results in lower bone density and obesity, among other things. Let kids be kids.

 

[Walter1]

These guys come out of an egg that's about 1-1.5 inches in length. Exactly how big do you expect it to be after 2 months? We need to stop thinking "big is good", because this is actually bad. Getting big fast is usually done at the cost of a healthy skeleton. There's nothing wrong with animals taking longer to grow. Forcing them to grow rapidly with lots of protein usually results in lower bone density and obesity, among other things. Let kids be kids.

Roadkill- you nailed it again.

 

[gabbytheginger]

These guys come out of an egg that's about 1-1.5 inches in length. Exactly how big do you expect it to be after 2 months? We need to stop thinking "big is good", because this is actually bad. Getting big fast is usually done at the cost of a healthy skeleton. There's nothing wrong with animals taking longer to grow. Forcing them to grow rapidly with lots of protein usually results in lower bone density and obesity, among other things. Let kids be kids.

Ok, I was just concerned because for a 3 month old he seemed small. Do you have a guess what he is? A b&w or a giant?

 

[Roadkill]

Same thing.

 

[gabbytheginger]

Same thing.

What do you mean?

 

[dpjm]

He means this:

I'm going to try approaching this from a different direction, as these questions keep coming up and making think I'm wasting my time.

When scientists find what they think is a new species, they don't just say "hey, new species here" and it automatically becomes canon. No, they have to compare it with other examples of already accepted species to show it's different, they have to submit a voucher specimen (ie. an individual, maybe more, is sacrificed and preserved, to represent THE base of that species, from which scientists in the future can go back and compare claims in the future against) to a natural history museum - this is called the holotype and these days they also want submitted where, when, and under what conditions the organism was collected, and they have to write up a detailed description of said species for publication. Even after this it doesn't guarantee they have a new species, as other scientists may do a better analysis or find that what has been described in one paper was already described earlier in a much less known publication.

For example, here's the monograph of Avila-Pires' work from 1995, on many lizards of the Amazon but on page 553 starts the description for Salvator merianae (then recognized as Tupinambis merianae).
http://www.repository.naturalis.nl/document/149074

In contrast, when hobbyists claim they have a new morph, or audacious enough to claim subspecies, what do they have to do to back up their claim: nothing. There are many that actually try to do several generations of production to establish a "blood line", but there's no requirement for it. Some may write up the characteristics of what they are claiming for this new morph, most do not. In the tegu hobbyist culture, it seems you don't have to do anything. Make a claim, and the public either buys it or says you're full of manure. The basic trend seems to be if you're a breeder then your claim gets accepted without scrutiny, and if you're not a respected breeder, then your claim is routinely challenged (as if breeding makes you knowledgeable....).

So here is the definitive description for Chacoan/Extreme giants:


And here's the definitive description for Blues:


And now the definitive description for Firebellies:



No, there isn't missing links, there simply isn't any definitive descriptions for what these are. At worst, these names are nothing more than fictitious labels applied to convince the less-knowledgeable that they need to pay more for this individual animal if they want to own it: at best, these names are applied to someone's poorly backed-up idea of what this morph is, often talked about in generalities but never definitively described so others can actually compare and contrast with reasonable accuracy.

With Extremes, the history says it all: the "Chacoan Extreme" is a suggested morph by the efforts of a former respected breeder by the name of Bobby Hill. Mr. Hill has since been proven to be an immense liar, extremely ignorant of the species he professed to be more knowledgeable about than most other people on the planet, a scam artist who suckered many, many people for many, many thousands of dollars, and his claims to being the type of breeder he claimed to be have since been proven to be bogus. Mr. Hill's claims of producing the "Chacoan Extreme" came about only about a couple of years before he was discovered of stealing many people's money and abandoning his small collection of tegus to die of neglect. For some reason, his fabrication of "Chacoan giant" persists to this day. There MIGHT actually be such a thing as a "Chacoan Extreme", but it wasn't anything professionally developed by Mr. Hill: it appears in his last active years that Mr. Hill was importing tegus from South America and then selling them off as something he had produced himself, and these animals may have come from a breeder in the Chaco region. Even if this were so, it really doesn't offer much evidence for this being a distinctive morph from that region, just that's where the shipper originates.

No one can say what a Chacoan giant is, or isn't. There's nothing to back up any claim, no definitive specimen to compare against, no clear description of what one actually looks like. At best, all there is is vague, generalized descriptions that could frankly fit any tegu.

 

[gabbytheginger]

He means this:

Thank you! I was questioning is they were just the bigger of the b&ws or if they were different entirely. I guess this answered that!

 

[Roadkill]

There IS, without question, populations of tegus that do appear to get much larger than other populations. This is not something I refute, but actually will stand up and agree to. However, many if not all the "morphs" that many hobbyists go on about were completely made up with maybe a couple years of selective breeding. Considering that the "Chacoan extreme" was made up so by someone that while many at the time thought was a great breeder but turned out to be a huge liar, scammer, and abuser of tegus, yet everyone still clings to this as a fact.....is beyond me. There may indeed be a Chacoan regional morph, possibly even a distinct species, but Bobby Hill didn't discover it and any resemblance to the actual thing would likely be out of coincidence.
Here's the jist of the whole thing: if there is such a thing as a proven strain of Chacoan extreme or any distinctive morph, then shouldn't there be either A) pedigree to accompany the animals (ie. these are the animal's parents and here's the lineage) or B) a detailed listing of characteristics that include or deny an individual from said "morph-hood" (technically, even B shouldn't qualify.....)? We don't have either, so really claiming any tegu to be one or another is nothing more than propping up an ideal without any idea what that ideal actually is. Charging extra money for such, in my opinion, is nothing short of a scam.