Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Well, i am no herpetologist, but i worked at a very good pet store in va beach for a couple of years (not animal jungle), that was when i was first introduced to tegus. o sure, we had savanahs, niles, asians, etc, but none of them seemed to have the same personality as the argentine tegus did. could thier ease of being (you hate this word) "tamed" attest to thier brain power? i think reptiles in general are smarter than most people think. what happens when the rest of the u.s. starts trying to ban them like north carolina did? thats a big tanget, but some how it seems wrong to me to let one own a horse (people get hurt and killed by horses every year), but not own a boa or tegu.
thanks for reading my rant!
dan

Tegus are very smart. I have owned many reptiles over the years and currently have over a dozen tegus as well as over 100 other reptiles.

Tegus are the ones I find the most intelligent. Over a year ago I realized that tegus could learn that a color could indicate food. Since then I have been clicker training them. Several others have since taken to clicker training their tegus once I had shown it was possible.

I can take any of my clicker trained tegus to the local park (which I do many times a month in the summer) and let them free roam. They walk and check out the trees, roots, tall grasses, even swim in the park pond. They love the attention they get from the kids who frequent the park often looking for the "Tegu Man" and his pets. When I am ready to leave I merely click the clicker and the tegus come running back to me. I treat them with superworms or nightcrawlers for responding and put them on the dash of the van and head home.

I have been unable to do that with any other reptile I have.

Sincerely,

Rick
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The Tegu Community - theTegu.com

Edit:

"Over a year ago I realized that tegus could learn that a color could indicate food"

After reading my own post, I realize this should have stated closer to 3 years ago.

For anyone interest, I discovered this completely by mistake. My son was coloring with markers and dropped the markers on the floor. One of the tegus ran over and grabbed the yellow marker. It was like he picked yellow. I picked up the markers and tossed them in front of the tegu and he again grabbed the yellow one. Odd..

A week later I noticed the yellow plastic tongs I once used for feeding this tegu. I assumed if it could learn color, perhaps it could learn sounds.

Since then a few of them have learned their names. For example, I can call Tux by name and Tux, no matter what he is doing, will look at me. Like a cat though; he may or may not come to be. It depends on if he is interested in being held. I do not always give him a treat when using his name so he will respond, but not always come to me like he would with the clicker.

Just shows how smart they really are.

Rick
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The Tegu Community - theTegu.com

Tegus are very intelligent, but clicker training has also been done with leopard geckos and they have also been able to distinguish color, I still vote for monitors to be the most intelligent lizard genus as a whole, they know how cage locks work or which direction to push a log if it is to far away from a basking spot,
just my opinion, and I still love tegus, but just prefer monitors
thanks
tony butler