One thing I do witch seems to help a lot, is hand feed them with a bowl, of course stressed out females will not feed from an approaching bowl regardless of the goodies inside.



In time when left alone they grow use to your presence and allow cage work without showing sings of stress.



A lizards that acts defensive is not relaxed, doesn’t matter if your spraying or handling it, stress affects the body in more ways then we can understand, adrenaline is produced in rapid burst to allow flight, but it takes a long time for the system to process it.

How this affects captive? For start each time a female is stressed her hart runs like a marathon, burning all nutrients needed for egg production, she then need to get these and calcium from her own bones and muscles, we as keepers do not see this until its too late, this is the reason I hand feed my females at this stage.



The simple fact that armata have the most developed spike armoury, is indicative of a specie heavily preyed upon, lizards develop defence mechanism when they need it most, be it functional or ornamental, the function remains to discourage predation.

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