Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Why is it that in alot of pics that i've seen of fat tails they all have regen. tails. Do they loose their tails more often then leos would.

Thanks

AFT's don't lose their tails more often than leos. The reason that you see more AFT's with regen tails is that they are still being imported. Most adult AFT's that you see in the pet trade are WC adults. They have had a tougher life than a cb animal and more likely to have dropped the tail to a escape a predator.

Most of the adult african fat tails with regrown tails are WC.
Of the 25 plus I own, I only have one with a regrown tail. I was told she was CB and since she was only 3 months old when I got her 2 years ago thats not unlikely. She was the very first fat tail i ever had and had no idea she had a regrown tail. I thought thats what they were supposed to look like. Got her from a local breeder.
My vet did tests on her and assured me that she showed no signs of parasites. Just to be safe I always ask if an animal is WC or CB. I myself will not buy a fat tail with a regrown tail now due to the fact that most are WC.
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collector of Leo's and African Fat tails
www.geckomomsgeckos.com
President of Friends with MS
www.friendswithms.com

I knew I read this somewhere, so looked it up. R. D. Bartlett and Patricia Bartlett's "Leopard and Fat-Tail Geckos" reports that the tail of the Fat Tail gecko is far more fragile than that of the leopard gecko. Henkel & Schmidt, "Geckoes: Biology, Husbandry, and Reproduction", give a fascinating explanation of autotomy, and suggest that this process is active and voluntary, (I guess the tail just doesn't "break off" accidentally?) and does not depend upon the amount of force with which the geckoes are grabbed by the tail. I suppose this still makes wild-caught specimens more prone to having regenerated tails, since I imagine they would face predators more often than those in our tanks at home However, I have a captive bred female with a regenerated tail--it looks like a little balloon and she is adorable. My WC-LTC male has a non-regenerated tail. So you can't always know WC/CB by looking at tails.