Jeff as stated before I am going to have to take a little different perspective on ants in horned lizards. And while I was plain about short horns and the food items they take, if you look at the scat of short horns they have ants in them, and it is my opinion a healthy horned lizard is one that is fed ants, while some don't need a full regimum every day all the time, others are much better with and of the ones I have kept over the years best sucess is including ants, so while this person is sure of this for himself, I believe there is enough stuff on our own site to warrant that ants are a requirement. If you look at the posts below, people are providing the wrong husbandry and HL's are dieing, I am going to stick with what I said, not because that was "my" statement, but because of my own experience, as well as looking at the scats of these. When I was up in Riudoso I captures several Short horns and let them go, I was able to examine the ants in the area(Black Ants) as well as the scat. THe scat in these lizards during the summer were mixed with ants and beetles and other small insects. Hydration is another issue in these as well. Obviosly if he is having this much success this is admirable, but over the long run without proper lighting and in my opinion ants at least on occassion with respect to this specie. And the person above that said ants in horned lizard diets is contreversial, I don't agree to that either, on what basis does that come from? So much study by many of our experts and written material more than adequately have described the ant in scat analysis etc. While I know we are not going to agree on everything, my own personal experience and sucess with the species I have worked with causes me to take a little harder line, I have seen to many horned lizards that have not been feed properly nor proper husbandry and thats a shame. If we indeed have established that horned lizards eat ants and many as a mainstay in there diet what is there to contest here? I don't understand.
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signature file edited. [phw 11/14/04]

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