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Greatballzofire Jared T Greatballzofire Jared T Jared T Greatballzofire _Jd Greatballzofire Jared T |
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Greatballzofire View Profile |
Mystery gender
Male; you can plainly see the postanal scales.
Female; no postanal scales. I don’t have a photo of the lizard in question yet, but tonight when they are not active I will get some pictures and post them in this thread. My lizard looks like the female here but it’s blue markings are much more colorful, and it also has blue flecking on the dorsal side, which none of my females have, but all my males have except the little babies. My partner right away thought it was a pregnant female. He is no lizard expert, but his hunches are usually right. This lizard is a feisty little character! It bit me a good hard pinch! LOL! |
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| 08/21/09 09:19pm |
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Jared T View Profile |
Message To: Greatballzofire In reference to Message Id: 2061715 Mystery gender
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| 08/21/09 11:04pm |
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Greatballzofire View Profile |
Message To: Jared T In reference to Message Id: 2061756 Mystery gender
Her vent close up.
Her belly.
Her back.
Group shot. They were not happy campers being disturbed this morning! On Mystery you can see that she has in the past lost her tail and regrown it, which makes identifying her from a distance easy, as nobody else has had to regrow a tail. Also the big rock she had chosen to live under was a female type selection. Males choose sites that have something tall, like a post, so they can flaunt their colors. Females stay close to the ground and prefer big rocks and fallen logs. So, I have concluded that Mystery is a female, and a welcome addition to my lizard colony. She got a Reptile Relief bath and all her ticks removed, and it does appear she may even be gravid. I’m amazed she had been able to survive under that rock in the garden all this time, what with over a dozen skilled at hunting cats in that vicinity. Finally, though, she had come to someone’s attention, and that is how I noticed her in time and rescued her. When I added her to the group the male seemed quite pleased! |
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| 08/22/09 09:10am |
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Jared T View Profile |
Message To: Greatballzofire In reference to Message Id: 2061863 Mystery gender
Aren’t the males generally a darker blue? Well maybe I’m wrong. I’m going to wait till I get my other lizards to determine the difference in colors lol |
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| 08/22/09 09:59am |
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Jared T View Profile |
Message To: Greatballzofire In reference to Message Id: 2061863 Mystery gender
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| 08/22/09 02:12pm |
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Greatballzofire View Profile |
Message To: Jared T In reference to Message Id: 2061941 Mystery gender
The lone male in the group photo is a naturally light colored individual, although his belly is bright blue with very dark almost black stripes. |
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| 08/22/09 02:46pm |
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_Jd View Profile |
Message To: Greatballzofire In reference to Message Id: 2061953 Mystery gender
I have a male & a female now. The female is my pet Ginny, the male I haven’t named because I don’t plan on keeping him around. I caught the male on my deck just a week or two ago, hoping to bred them. I was given an another old 10 gallon aquarium by my neighbor, I cleaned it out & got a couple rocks & some substrate in it. I like to keep them together as much as possible, so at night they always sleep together in her cage. I know night isn’t the time they mate, just want them to get used to each other, plus I am not always up when the lights come on & they get up, that’s when I’m hoping they mate really. During most feeding and for a couple hours each day I normally pull out the male & put him in his less accommodating set up. The male is just around for breeding, after which I was hoping to re-release him onto the deck again. I was just going to say when they are together Ginny posts up on her highest rock, as she did before he came around. Occasionally she moves to the Zoo-Med climbing wall and hammock. He always likes to stay under the logs and leaves, and he sleeps under rocks and under the log. Ginny never goes under the log, even if she’s startled and is running around the cage from a hand, she won’t use the log to hide. This brings me to my main question, why would you say a lizard picks a male or female type spot? How do the spots they pick to post up on, sleep, or hide have genders?!? Wouldn’t spots be more defined by the life experiences and personality of each lizard? If you have some articles or facts on the tendency of males or females picking certain type spots, please post a link because I should read up on it. I was under the strong impression it was just about the lizards personality. For example, I would predict a lizard wild caught from an area with few other lizards and lots of cats, would chose a lower hiding spot based on what it is gotten used to in order to survive, and not on the gender of the spot in question? It’s like saying that person must be female because they’re in the kitchen cooking. I would think a lizard caught deep in the woods, that is used to living in deep woods would chose much higher spots because they’re used to climbing up for heat, climbing high for sun, climbing fast for protection, and climbing to at least halfway up just to spot potential mates during season. Whether male or female, this would still hold true. Ginny was caught in a large, heavily wooded city park. Now, in your own cage, since there are a lot of other lizards in a confined space, social patterning may have led to your females sticking to certain spots and males sticking to others. This is because the lizards you start with have favorite spots, and then as you add new lizards in your cage, they learn where to hang out at from lizards already in there. If I got a bigger cage and then added more lizards to it, I would guess the males would stick to the ground & the females would climb, based off the lizards already in the cage... |
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| 08/28/09 01:07pm |
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Greatballzofire View Profile |
Message To: _Jd In reference to Message Id: 2064653 Mystery gender
So when I see a fence lizard on a post high off the ground, and another fence lizard next to the post on a rock, almost always the one high up in easy view is male and the more furtive one on the rock is female. If you want your lizards to mate, put them together in a much larger habitat and leave the male with her permanently. Let him stamp his territory. Taking him in and out is stressful and will just make him timid and insecure. |
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| 09/05/09 09:52am |
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Jared T View Profile |
Message To: _Jd In reference to Message Id: 2064653 Mystery gender
I have three females, and have had them for months(June) and they all seem to act differently. One day they will sleep and hang up high, and another they will decide to sleep in the bedding. I guess it all depends on if I bugged them with pictures or handling. My male lizards first night was something else, he slept up high in the corner of the tank on the rock background behind the leaves. After he found his spot for rest, Destiny shortly came by and crawled right up beside him. First thing I ever called him was.... Buddy! lol so it stuck. |
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| 09/05/09 12:43pm |
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