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My wife asked me if there are any twins in leopard geckos? I know that there must be, but I didn't have a precise answer for her. If any of you could help me out I would appreciate it!! Any pics would be nice too! Take care everyone!

Jesse

My guess would be that it's possible for there to be twins in an egg, but that as they tried to grow they would probably die in the egg. If there have been any twins, I would think that it would be EXTREMELY rare.

I've noticed that a lot of the time, clutchmates look similar, if not identical. Unfortunately I don't have any good pictures. These have the same 'C' shaped half circle just down from their neck, but you can't see one of them in the picture. My jungle albinos have not looked similar at all to each other, though. Don't know why.

As for two geckos coming from the same egg, I don't see where it's impossible, just improbable. They are so cramped in the egg as it is without having a brother or sister sharing the space.

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Edited on January 6, 2004 at 18:19:54 by phwyvern.

my thoughts as far as thinking that twins would most likely die in the egg would be that besides being cramped, they're also competing for nutrients from the yolk, and I would think it unlikely that there would be enough yolk to sustain both babies full term. I'm not an expert on the subject...I've only barely just gotten my first leos, but I'm just thinking about how things tend to work with other animals.

That makes more sense than my logic.

I think someone posted here or in the Gecko Forum a few years ago that they had seen it...maybe even had a picture? But that's once I've heard it in 4 years.
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Edited on January 6, 2004 at 18:18:15 by phwyvern.

Well, I just did a search for "twins" in the 2003 archives and there were actually several cases of 2 pythons hatching from the same egg, as well as 2 bearded dragons from one egg. Apparently it does happen! For the pythons though it seems like they were more cases of 2 eggs, one shell as they had different patterns or morphs or smt... I have definitely heard of conjoined twins...fairly often actually. I'd never heard of fraternal or identical twins (although I realize this is technically what conjoined twins are) though! Good question to have brought up Jesseter!

I've had a couple eggs containing conjoined twins. In both cases, the geckos never made it out of the egg. Both sets of twins were joined at the head. One set was at the hatch date when the egg went bad, in this set the roof of the skull was missing and the brain was exposed, this is probably why they didn't make it out. I preserved the bodies, but they would make for rather gruesome viewing.

Last year (I think) someone posted a pic on either the classifieds or here of a conjoined set of albinos that made it out of the egg alive.

-Alice

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I remember someone posting pictures of some leo twins on this forum, and they were identical!

I have heard of sets of twins from eggs before. These cases are pretty rare. If I remember rightly there was one set of leo twins hatched from somebody here a few years ago. I am not sure if they survived or not. I know of one set of chondro twins, for sure one didn't make it. Don't know what happened to the other. From what I know of twin reptiles...they are waaaay smaller (similiar to multiples in humans). The survival rate is probably not that great considering that they babies are so small and weaker. You figure that they had to share room and yolk in the egg.

The chondro twins I heard of weighed 4 grams each, about half the size of a single newborn. Getting these guys to eat is hard in the first place but finding food small enough for a 4 gram baby is not easy. The lady had to feed it pinkie parts, which do not have the nutritional value that a whole pinkie does.