Our 2 year old tegu is free roaming when we're home (although he gets a bedroom while we're at work). We spend so much time with him, he'll often sleep with us like a cat or a dog when we're at home (right now our bed is on the floor while we're redecorating, and he'll crawl into bed when he's ready to go to sleep)x.
In the 19 months we've had him we've had three bites: The first was early in the morning, we woke him up and were carrying him around and we think the smell of our morning breath triggered him to bite (i guess it probably has an old meat smell). That was about 9 months ago. About six weeks ago, he was sitting in my partner's lap and got a taste of some blood on her arm and went for it. This morning he just woke up, walked over to her, licked her for a while, and then bit the side of her face.
The first 2 instances are pretty easily explainable: he was barely awake for the first one, and the second one, well, blood probably tastes a lot like meat, no matter who's wearing it. But this third bite is an outlier because we can't find a cause for it (well, other than he's a tegu, but he's never made a move to bite any one before outside of these other 2 instances, under any circumstances, including strangers and kids). It wasn't a fear response because she was sleeping and he trusts us. And I do all the feeding, so there's no reason to associate her with food and he wasn't aggressive when we removed him. This was also a lighter bite than the one 6 weeks ago (there's still blood and bumps and bruises, but when he bit her arm it was a hanging on for dear life situation).
We feel pretty strongly that one of the reasons that he's so well socialized (our vet, a former tegu owner, is always remarking on how well behaved he is, so it's not just a proud parent thing) is that he sleeps in our bed, surrounded by the smell of people, so we don't want to give up that taming tool, but clearly, face biting is not a pleasant way to wake up. Does anyone have any ideas as to why this would be happening all of a sudden and if there's anything we can do to ensure it doesn't happen again?
In the 19 months we've had him we've had three bites: The first was early in the morning, we woke him up and were carrying him around and we think the smell of our morning breath triggered him to bite (i guess it probably has an old meat smell). That was about 9 months ago. About six weeks ago, he was sitting in my partner's lap and got a taste of some blood on her arm and went for it. This morning he just woke up, walked over to her, licked her for a while, and then bit the side of her face.
The first 2 instances are pretty easily explainable: he was barely awake for the first one, and the second one, well, blood probably tastes a lot like meat, no matter who's wearing it. But this third bite is an outlier because we can't find a cause for it (well, other than he's a tegu, but he's never made a move to bite any one before outside of these other 2 instances, under any circumstances, including strangers and kids). It wasn't a fear response because she was sleeping and he trusts us. And I do all the feeding, so there's no reason to associate her with food and he wasn't aggressive when we removed him. This was also a lighter bite than the one 6 weeks ago (there's still blood and bumps and bruises, but when he bit her arm it was a hanging on for dear life situation).
We feel pretty strongly that one of the reasons that he's so well socialized (our vet, a former tegu owner, is always remarking on how well behaved he is, so it's not just a proud parent thing) is that he sleeps in our bed, surrounded by the smell of people, so we don't want to give up that taming tool, but clearly, face biting is not a pleasant way to wake up. Does anyone have any ideas as to why this would be happening all of a sudden and if there's anything we can do to ensure it doesn't happen again?
