Good points. I always try and treat my animals as individuals and let them tell me what they need, like, don't like etc.She just got so excited out in the garden digging like a maniac that I thought I would at least try. Well, that's what she did - dig, but when it comes to burrowing she definitely likes the mulch. Once I get her new cage built next month, I'll experiment again with the substrate. Maybe having a bigger area of dirt to dig/burrow in or maybe a different mix will make the difference. Maybe it won't. We'll see. Either way, as long as she's happy I'm happy! 
>>Thinking more about substrate, it occurred to me that in some of the Tegus habitat leaf litter would be a common thing to utilize for burrows.
>>Case in point, I have an Argus Monitor, after weeks of trying out various top soils, dirt from my back yard, even decomposed granite my Argus wouldnt use any of it. Out of desperation I went ahead and used Cyphrus Mulch, and sure enough, in minutes my Argus was digging out burrows and tunnels.
>>I asked a few people who have studied Argus out in the wild and their answer was simply, "Hey Argus monitors live near forests and nearly always by some sort of body of water. They use leaf litter to make burrows, mulch is similar to leaf litter."
>>Now by no means do I think this is a definitative answer, because I'm aware of several captive Argus that use dirt just fine, but these days I've been letting my lizards tell me what they want to use. So I have one that uses mulch, great, it'll get mulch. With your Tegu this may also be the case, but I wonder, does mulch make more sense to a Tegu for a burrowing medium?
>>My 2 cents for the day, let us know how the soil experiment goes.
>>
>>-Kit
