Reptile & Amphibian Forums

These guys were peeking out of the incubator this morning. Haven't seen any photo's of fresh hatchlings on the forum, figured you guys might like to see some Tupinambis merianae babies.

#2

Thank you for sharing the pictures.
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Rick
theTegu.com

New Tegu Community: theTegu.com - Webcam: Tux.theTegu.com

Very nice photos! What great color babies have. Wouldn't it be cool if they reatined that bright green?
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Peace!
KofSeattle
Reptile-Like
Here lizard lizard.........

Wow! Now that's green! Thanks so much for posting; I've never seen that fresh a hatchling before. congratulations! How many more to come?

Leslie

This year was kind of a bad year for breeding here, so we're only expecting around 300.

300? Whoa! That's a lot of little tegus. Guess you'll be busy!

Leslie

That's if we're lucky. This years batch was unusually early, and the weather here has been kind of off for the last year and a half. Normally, we're up around 500 or so.

are you breeding for worldwide export? I assume the babies are for wholesale export, are you at liberty to say what they sell for when someone buys a large quantity?
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Bennett

beardiedragon.com
Home of the Florida Orange

Sorry, not that I can't give you a price, but your incorrect as to their purpose - they AREN'T for the pet trade. These animals are bred for research.

Wow that must be some research project. If you dont mind me asking, what type of research? Is there some place you have your work published where I could do some reading? Info on Tegus has never exactly been plentifull. any links or sites you know of with valuable Tegu info would be appreciated.

BTW here are some of my tegu pens and my crew

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Bennett

beardiedragon.com
Home of the Florida Orange

Well, the type of research is basically whatever you can imagine (genetics, physiology, morphology, systematics, behaviour, natural history, reproduction, development, etc). It isn't for one research project, but for many. The goal of the facility is to reduce scientists' need to harvest and impact on natural populations (except for those studying ecological aspects, of course). We breed more than just tegus.
There actually is quite a lot of literature on tegus, but it's in scientific journals, and may not be the type of information you seek. Most of the natural history material is published in portuguese and spanish, however. Getting access to your local universities' libraries would give you a pretty decent wealth of information.
My own particular interests, aside from general herpetology, is in ecological physiology. I'm currently finishing up a project looking at reptilian hibernation in T.merianae and the physiological changes that they undergo in their annual cycles. The current project is pretty introductory and descriptive, as although people commonly use words like brumation, hibernation, and dormancy, they are literally meaningless as there is no currently widely accept definition to describe those terms in reptiles. In all honesty, we don't even know what defines sleep in reptiles. Sure, it's easy to say their eyes are closed, respiration has slowed, and they're generally inactive, but how is that different from simply resting? Sleep as scientists know it is only defined in mammals and birds. The correlates of electroencephalographic activity with which we are familiar (rapid eye movement sleep, slow wave sleep) do not have any homologues or analogues so far as we know in any of the other vertebrates. It's my long term goal to clear up some of this vagueness.

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Bennett

beardiedragon.com
Home of the Florida Orange

It's quite interesting the complete difference in colouration of hatchlings in the two closely related species. I was also hoping to have some T.quadrilineatus this year, but unfortunately the female's eggs turned out to be unfertilized.

OK since you brought it up, tell us about the 4 lined tegu??? never heard of it until now
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Bennett

beardiedragon.com
Home of the Florida Orange

Hmmn, what to say. They don't exactly have 4 lines, per se, but they aren't that strongly patterned like T.merianae. They are quite often sympatric with T.merianae, existing east of the Andes, from the south shore of the Amazon down to southern Brazil (I think, I don't think they go as far south as T.merianae). They are generally smaller than T.merianae, having more of a pointed skull, and whereas males are usually the bigger sex in T.merianae, from the few that I've seen of T.quadrilineatus, the females are generally larger. T.merianae tend to hibernate, T.quadrilineatus do not (or so I've been told). In Brazil, they tend to breed before the winter/dry season (T.merianae breed after) and lay eggs around the same time as T.merianae (late August-early October) but have a smaller clutch size (16-24 generally) and a much longer incubation time. Other than that, can't really say much. I don't have any photos of them at the moment, but I'll try to get some to post on the forum.

Are they found in the pet trade? What is their temperment like? What do they eat? how big do they get? Are they friendly or impossible to tame? are they exported? are they endangered?

found this pic on the web
http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/resources/laurie_vitt/T_quadriineatus.jpg/view.html

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Bennett

beardiedragon.com
Home of the Florida Orange

Ah yes, Laurie Vitt (that's a guy by the way). Yep, that's quadrilineatus, although I've seen some that aren't quite so strongly marked on the sides like that. They basically eat the same as T.merianae. They aren't as aggressive, but tend to be much more skittish.
From what I've seen, they don't get that large, max size around 2kg.
As for taming them, I can't really say. I have great luck taming anything, but I haven't really worked directly with quadrilineatus. I'm afraid I don't know if they are endangered, but they are uncommon. I have rarely encountered them in the pet trade, and that was years ago. I doubt they are exported as Brazil is severely cracking down on that sort of thing. Understandably so, as they have been taken advantage of by some rather unscrupulous companies and researchers. However, that is not to say they are impossible to get.