Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I always thought that when they were gaping that meant that they were hot or too hot. Why does my little female go to the hottest part of the cage and get under the basking light just to sit and gape... go figure?

It's normal. They do this to regulate their body temp without going to the cooler side. Just make sure the temp is not to hot for it. Mine do this too after basking for a while.
-----
Mystical Dragons

Probably because she's to lazy to move when she gets too hot. My beardie does the same thing. Sits and basks for a while, then opens her mouth to cool down, and then basks some more :-D

Nice picture by the way!

fairly noraml mine do the same thing.
that is an extrem;y clear picture what kind of camera do you have

Mat

I shoot with a canon 10d digital, of course dragons allow for nice long exposures when they are sitting very still as mine seem to do.

My theory is that they do this, for example, while digesting food. Their brains warm up faster than their gut, so they cool off their brain while they warm up their gut. Their midsection takes the longest to cool down and warm up, because its the thickest part of their body. Sometimes I notice my dragon gaping while his stomach is still relatively cool to the touch.

YES! exactly what I belive too....

that head will warm up fast, that big gut needs some time....

so you cool the head till you get a good gut temp then go hide and digest for a while.
-----
This space reserved for future use...

I'm on cable, and it took a good 20 seconds to download this image.. It's 3Meg in size, and for dialup users, that's about 15 minutes... by which time, most people have clicked back and gone onto the next question.

You should've gotten photo software with your digital camera. If not, there's plenty available for free download on the web (such as The GIMP).

640x480 is a good size for posting to web forums
-----
Axe
The Reptile Rooms

I leave them on pbase at full size but I linked to the wrong page, they have several different thumbnail sizes that are automatically created, I usually use meduium or large, I linked it too soon and the site software had not created the thumbnails so it defaulted to the original....my bad. BTW the software that comes with the camera is mostly useless I use Photoshop for that stuff, but thanx for the heads up.