Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Ive had my baby sulcata for about 2 weeks now, and it has been doing fine. Usually, it just wakes up, eats, basks, eats, basks, drink a little, eat, bask etc. all day, prodigious amounts of food.

Today, it ate much less, instead turning its interest into digging at the wall corner where the water tray is (it is a shallow flower tray with about 2 cm of water in it, just enough to let it soak. It is placed against two sides of the walls, in a corner on the cool end, touching the corner). He would dig and dig, not burrow down, but dig at the wall as if trying to climb up.

Well, I checked on it earlier in the morning and it had overturned itself digging there, so it was upside down in the water tray. I corrected it, and saw that it had actually made some significant scratches in the wood. So I figured it overturned by digging/climbing to a vertical position so it was standing against the wall. As such, I stuck some very shiny masking cloth tape on that corner and watched it try to climb again. The slippery surface made it seem like it can't go into vertical position again, thus I thought it wouldn't overturn again.

I checked again in about 2 hours, and lo and behold, he had overturned again in the water tray and unable to correct itself!!!! I put it back upright elsewhere and surely enough, he's back there in a jiffy climbing again. I watched it for about 20 mins and it got itself in a vertical position again by putting a claw on the edge of one of the pieces of tape. So now I have put more shiny tape so that there are absolutely NO horizontal edges there. I am hoping this will solve the problem as I have to leave the house soon. If not, what can I do about this??? And why is it doing that all of a sudden? He doesn't dig anywhere else only at that corner where the water tray is against the wall. I have thought about moving the tray but that would make it more easy to go to vertical position as the tray is kind of slippery but the floor/substrate is not.

Is the temperature perhaps too hot and it is trying to get away? Do you have anything in the enclosure to keep it occupied? My hermanni used to constantly dig at the walls until I add some grape vine things (got them at the petstore) and a pile of rocks. Now he spends all day climbing those. He sometimes overturns himself but can usually get a toe hooked on something and flip himself back over.

My sulcata does the same type of thing; climbing up the wall in the corner of his enclosure. I've come to the conclusion that he does it because he's basically He's Bored! He's only managed to flip himself over (actually wasn't all the way over, but was teetering up on his side...strange I know, but that's how I found him LOL).

You should try setting up another 'tort safe' area that you can let him have some free roaming time. I've got a hallway that can be closed off from all the areas of the house that I let my guy loose in when the weather is bad. I scatter a few treats here and there and let him forage around to find them while he's in there. He's also got an outdoor 'penned' area where he plays when the sun is shining. He runs around out there for a few hours and he's good and tired when he comes back in and doesn't do the corner climb anymore.

~~ Lisa