What Is The Ideal Large Lizard To Care For?

[purplemuffin]

I vote black and white tegu. Iguanas can be as dangerous as monitors.. I have personally seen someone's face destroyed by her iguana of 8+ years who just reacted badly one day. She got relaxed after years of good temperment only to be attacked when he was about to enter breeding season again. No warning, and she ended up with a ton of stitches and had to basically reconstruct her face. It ruined her relationship with her iguana from that point on. Just be aware..no matter how tame they are.. They CAN hurt you, and for very random reasons. Sometimes during certain times of the month iguanas can act different towards other females in the house. Which can be scary. Speaking from experience here! Only time I am attacked is on those certain days! Iguanas are great, but.. Don't ever, ever underestimate them! Just because they don't eat meat does not mean they don't pack a punch. Look up iguana bite!

Also, the size enclosure can be incredibly expensive, plus all the fresh veggies also gets expensive(many of their good veggies they need(not iceburg lettuce!) can be hard to find during some times of the year in some places!) Since it's hard to really overfeed a herbivore, you need to give the iguana as much food as it will eat(this does not mean give it as much iguana pellets as it wants..but for fresh greens, that's okay) and when they get to be 5-6 feet, that can be a lot of food!

Tegus also can be dangerous, but the black and whites are known to be especially tame. Plus they don't climb high, so they aren't going to jump off their perch onto your FACE! They eat a varied diet of mostly meat, and some fruit occasionally.. Generally for me, meat eating animals are just easier to care for


Also, free roaming iguanas is difficult. You need to make wherever he stays iguana safe. That means warm, with uvb access, and humid. Not many people want to completely heat a room/rooms/have multiple basking spots if it has multiple rooms to go through. With the humidity added to the mix, and worrying about if he will hurt the cats(he could) or if the cats could hurt him(they REALLY could) you will end up having a lot more of a headache. That's the nice thing about a proper sized cage. But if you want to do free roaming.. You'll need to be incredibly clean. OCD clean. I have seen many iguanas need surgery/die from eating stuff off the floor! This one woman was very clean, vacuumed often, but not daily, but she had long hair which shed quite a bit. The iguana later needed surgery from eating hair that had gotten in the carpet or in the bathroom. Seriously, not big chunks of hair, like, one single hair touched his tongue. But it would get caught and stay in his stomach. The hair built up over the next month, just because they lick the ground curiously sometimes. I can't remember if he lived or not, but it was expensive and terrifying. Just in the last few months on the forums I visit I have seen at least a dozen iguanas who have eaten bad food(trash, plastic toys, hair, sponges, cat food, cat poop, dirt, toilet paper, etc.) and many of them didn't make it. Same rules go for other lizards. If you want to free roam, get ready for the headache. "Free roaming" a single room/basically giving the iguana a bedroom is very different to me. But still, basically make the room the iguana's cage, but bigger. And if anyone knows the difficulty of just making a 55 gallon tank warm enough...a room is a lot harder!


In general I think a black and white tegu will be cheaper, safer, tamer, and easier for a first big lizard..I know it will be my first big lizard(since the iguana is technically my boyfriend's parents iguana)