Reptile & Amphibian Forums

just wait till you get to their awesome explanation of what "cold-blooded" means... is it just me or does this article seem to be written by someone that knows little or nothing about reptiles? Saying that a bearded dragon is a cheap pet to keep? I'm sure most of us can attest to how wrong that is. There's much more that's just confusing really.

http://www.thesundaymail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,10571582%5E421,00.html

If you read that article, you'll see that there is a lot of "tongue in cheek" humor as opposed to in-depth scientific research. Take it for what it is, a human interest story.

Also reptiles can be less expensive to keep when such things as size of enclosure (big breed dogs require a large yard) and food (have you bought dog food lately, a large dog will kill your budget?).
Scales - Premium Exotic Reptiles

Agreed, they were not trying to be scientific about anything, just some dry humor to make the article a little more interesting/amusing. Nonetheless, thanks for the article, i love reading about beardies in news-like articles, and am always glad to see beardies get a positive review.

David
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I just thought it was ridiculous in that whoever wrote it doesn't really have a clue about reptiles...."they're cold blooded, which means they sleep a lot"... they don't sleep anymore than a dog or a cat or anything.

and about the statement of large dogs costing more...well, people know that large dogs are going to eat more and therefore cost more to feed... to people that don't know beardies, low cost can make them think it'll cost them next to nothing to take care of, and that's surely not the case, at least not for the first year. I was amazed at how much it costed to maintain Syd the first year we had him...he was a cricket eating machine that went through about a hundred a week, and he wasn't even a baby, more a subadult. A dragon that's growing an inch every week or two is going to cost much more to feed, especially considering that most petstores (where I come from at least) charge $10 for 100 crix. A month of that alone is about $40 worth of food, and that's just food. Six monthes of that is $240, plus another 20 or so for a new uv bulb. That's just costs for a beardie that eats 100 a week...a baby will eat more, sometimes much more. Plus the setup(s) to maintain a dragon cost quite a bit, and the yearly vet checkups/fecal add to it as well.

Just trying to say, they are in no way cheap pets, at least not until they get older.

np
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How very sad that someone wrote this. I can see a lot of beardies getting homes now to people who think they are low cost pets! Great!!