I did a little search in my library and online and found some scattered info on fat composition in lizards. In Dr. Eric Pianka’s book, Ecology and Natural History of Desert Lizards - 1986, he makes reference to studies showing that desert lizards typically have slightly larger fat reserves on average than moist climate lizards. This evolved as a survival adaptation to counter times of food scarcity in highly variable desert environments. Another study conducted in Florida supplied physiological data gathered on an established wild population of Nile monitors. Fat content of these animals averaged about 5% of total body weight. However, prey composition studies in almost all cases show nutrient composition of prey animals as percent dry weight. As such, that would put the dry matter fat percentage of these monitors at around 12 % to 15% on average. My guess would be that the diets of these Niles was considerable better than that of their African counterparts. Another study looked at a wild population of Cordylus in a dry region of Africa. These arid climate lizards would probably be very indicative of desert species in general. They gave dry matter actual weight figures only and no percentages, so I had to do some calculations, but they appeared to be in roughly the 10% range on dry matter basis. Comparing those fat content figures to some listed for anolis, that 10% figure looks even more reliable. While lab raised rats and mice on higher fat diets have easily twice this fat content, data on wild rats and mice show fat contents that are not that much higher than wild ranging lizards. Another case for the monitoring and/or revising of the diets fed to captive rodents that are to be used as feeders for captive snakes.

Another excellent point that Tom brought up on April 23rd in another thread below, was the issue of not only what to feed, but how much. Even when using nutritionally balanced and appropriate prey items, you can still run into health problems and overfeed even when using low body fat prey items.

Kelly

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