Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have an Argentine B&W Tegu who I feed fruit and such in addition to his animal prey. I figured I might as well offer some to my Blackthroat too. He eats all of it! So far he has taken cooked egg, yams/sweet potatos, grapes and banannas. I am assuming a little plant matter is fine for him...his main diet consists of dusted crickets, kingworms, and silkworms, as well as fuzzy mice. Has anyone heard of BT's eating fruit, or is mine just a wierdo?

Silly lizard, he thinks he is an iguana!

Nutritional value, they have very short intestines, therefore they cannot ferment vegetation to draw any nutrients from it. Thats why plant eaters have multi chamber stomachs, and very long intestines.
If its hungry feed it something it will get some use from instead, such as more mice, quail, chicken peeps (if big enough to), hissers. I noticed that albigs that are very hungry will sometimes eat anything offered to them, but if fed higher amounts of useful food they wont eat other stuff.
Ive heard of many eating vegetable matter, but its of no real use to them nutritionally.
Nice looking BT by the way.

Lots of monitors eat plants, in fact, in one book, Goanna Book, they use a pie chart and plant matter is listed.

On occasion, we offer my sons tortoise food to many species of monitors, and again on occasion, they eat it. Some fairly regularly, some not.

Also, I see many species of insect eating lizards, eating plants. Of course the books do not say they do, but they do. On another forum, I give day to day updates on a wild Scaly lizard, I have for four years now.(during the summer) and every year, she decides to eat cactus fruit. She gets that telltale, cactus juice face. I believe I posted pics of that. I have also seen them eat flowers.

The question is, why do people believe books. Or at least take what they say as rule. I get the feeling, biologist, have a huge need to classify things, and so they stick species in catagories. I guess if you were to put monitors in a catagory, it would be carnivorous, because they mostly eat meat(animals/insects) but surely the books do not stop them from eating plant matter too. No matter what their skull and teeth are shaped like. Kinda the same for cats and dogs(wolves and wildcats) they also eat plant matter when they feel the need.

Unlike Shvar, I think they eat plants when they have a dietary need to do so. It could mean, something is missing in their normal diet. It could also mean, your not feeding enough. Or there could be no reason at all. Please consider, young monitors in the right temps, are bottomless pits, they are starving within a couple of hours of feeding. While us keepers think we are feeding enough, signs like eating plants, the water bowl, anything it could get its mouth on, are signs that we are not feeding enough. Good luck, FR

Wow where did you get that lizard it is one of the best looking bt's i have seen. Would love to get one from this ones parents.

I actually just got him from a local reptile store that a friend is the manager of. I wanted to get a nice c.b. baby, but was in there for something else and was in a "mood", and fell victim to impulse. He's probably wild caught, and is actually way nicer in person then in that photo. Much bigger and lighter with lots of pink. I'll try to get some updated pics soon.