Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Does anyone have Earless Lizards, Greater Earless to be exact? I have one male Greater Earless, most likely SW subspecies. I am looking for hoe you guys care for them. Thanks.

You need a lot of space for these lizards as they are active, they for the most part have went down for the winter in nature. You need a Mercury Vapor bulb and a basking bulb, you don't say how long it is, but given it is an adult I wouldn't use anything less than a 40 gallon cage. THe hot side needs to be about 110 degrees and ambient temps 85 to 90 degrees, probably 85 on the cool side.

These lizards can jump when hot so be careful when cleaning your cage. They will eat wax worms, crickets, and small king mealworms. They need to be warm before they will eat. Depending on you house tmeps and weather he is in good conditiion or not, you may want to get an under the tank heater if you live where your house temps are real cold. The only reason for that is to keep the temps up enough so he's active and eating if its too cold and there is toomuch of a disparagence between night temps and day temps he will not feed as redily as he should.

YOu should put in a lizard cave, a few flat rocks, and some fake plants or even a small branch close to the ground. They like to sit on some hight point and survey there surroundings, but they also dig into the ground, use home depot play sand for this lizard and about 3 to 4 inches of sand for substrate. You'll spray the rocks and fake plants from time to time maybe once a week and see if he will lick off the glass and rocks for mositure. They also retian mositure from the food they eat. This lizard should be fattened up if its not in good condition and then hibernated if it is an adult. Please post pictures of the animal and the length of the lizard, also if you can take picture of the underside males have very bright coloration.

This is the basics in my opinion, certianly someone else might chime in, also these lizards will eat flowers and some greenery. So you might try rose pedals, or kale or some other greenery, no regualr lettuce though. Make sure the flowers have not been sprayed by some chemical........Cheers!!!
-----
www.phrynosoma.org

______

signature file edited. [phw 11/14/04]

Ok, I have most of that stuff. My tank is a bit small. He is only 7 inches if you take into consideration the tail he lost. He is a male, been already determined by his coloration. I do plan on getting a 40 breeder. Is that large enough long term? I also thought of maybe in the future getting him a mate. If the 40 breeder is not enough I may consider having him adopted out. Thanks.

I have a male, and they make very interesting little pets.
They adapt to captivity fairly easy from what I've seen, but one problem I have experienced is dehydration. Mine drinks fine from a water bowl, and all of a sudden he stopped. At the same time he stopped eating, but I could tell it was the dehydration from the sunken eyes. Misting had no effect on him, so we had to carefully open his mouth and use an eye dropper. This was used as a last hope, but fortunately it worked and he started eating and drinking again. Monitor your lizard carefully if it stops eating. I think it may be a common problem because I had a female a while ago that did the same thing.

The substrate you use is extremely important to these lizards as well. They love to burrow when they sleep at night, so something fairly fine-grained must be used. Fine sand or calcisand or anything powdery should be avoided at all costs. Through trial and error I now use ground walnut bedding. While it was obvious that the lizards really liked fine-grained sand, they got it in their eyes and I had to use a mister to flush their eyes out daily or they became crusted over and were unable to see. While the male I have first refused to even lay or burrow in the walnut bedding, he quickly became accustomed to it and now lives just as happily as he did with sand. They like some rocks in their cages to bask on and I have some wooden furnishings to give mine a vantage point that he utilizes often. Hide boxes are completely useless of course though because they burrow.

This species is very active and watches everything around it. While it becomes accustomed to human presence (Mine now ignores me whenever I spot clean the cage), they will never become used to handling. They do, however, make a great display animal.
-----
0.1 ball python
0.1 corn snake
0.1 rosy boa
1.0 bearded dragon
1.0 leopard gecko
0.0.1 yellow ackie
1.0 greater earless lizard

0.1 quaker parrot
1.0 fischers lovebird