Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i have what i was told is a male sudan plated lizard, Leo, he is currently living in a 220 gallon tank with 4 beardies and he seems to love it, he piles right up with the beardies, no fighting for food or anything, and i was wondering about breeding them but two probs occur, I am not 100% sure about his sex and I cannot find a female anywhere on the net. Zoological Imports has Sudan Plated's for $19.00 shipping but they wont guarantee sex and I can't get anyone from there to write or call back, any info would be appreciated!

I've tried contacting Zoological Imports in the past - they never return emails. Either they don't care about earning your business or as I suspect, the company is defunct and the website has never been taken down. Either way, I would steer well clear of doing business with someone like that. Plated Lizards for sale are pretty common among many breeder/importer sites. You just have to keep looking. I located many sources that I have bookmarked simply by clicking on links in the Kingsnake breeders directory. You have to look at a lot of junk before you find some good sites but it pays to keep looking.

I'm assuming you have Gerrhosaurus major, a largish uniformly brown colored Plated Lizard with a light colored underbelly, and a large head with a blunt snout. There is one subspecies, Gerrhosaurus major bottegoi that is often sold as an Ornate Plated Lizard. It has flecks of black and red on the scales, a much more attractive lizard but fairly uncommon. The name Sudans are actually known by in Africa is Rough-scaled Plated Lizard or Round-nosed Plated Lizard. This 'Sudan' business comes from some assigning that name to them simply because some of them may get imported from there or are shipped from Sudan before being exported out of some other third country like Ghana.

Sexing isn't difficult if you know what you're looking for, and if you indeed have a Rough-scaled Plated. Both sexes have femoral pores but males have much more prominent pores than females. You'll see waxy secretions coming out of the pores - it's really obvious, but might be difficult to figure out for sure if you don't have several to compare to. Unfortunately, this is a cheap lizard and most importers don't care much about them so they don't bother to learn much about sexing them.

In most cases an importer or reseller is only concerned about getting their Plateds sold quickly. The best you can hope for is that they might be kind enough to take some photos of the cloacal region so that you can try to sex the lizards yourself based on the femoral pores. Of course you have to have a decent photo to begin with and your chances of that are going to be slim.

I'm assuming you want a male/female because you intend to breed? If so, then you're going to need to get them out of the tank with the Beardies. You've already kept your Plated in with the Beardies, so there's no going back there, but in order to create the proper environment for breeding they MUST be in a separate cage, and it's a good idea to keep the sexes separate until you want to introduce them for breeding. Finally, Plateds come from a much more temperate area than Beardies do, so either your Plated is being baked under the lighting your Beardies require or your Beardies are not getting temps as high as they would like.

Also, your Plated Lizard is wild-caught, and your Beardies are captive bred. Unless you bought your Beardies from the most filthy, irresponsible breeder, they should have been free of parasites or bacterial infections. Your Plated Lizard has parasites of one form or another - there's no getting around that. Unless it was treated by a vet after you acquired it, you may have unwittingly exposed your Beardies to parasites for which their bodies have no defenses. That is why it's seldom a good idea to house multiple species together and why it's certainly almost always a bad idea to house together species from entirely different continents.
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Matt Campbell
Animal Keeper, Small Mammal/Reptile House
Lincoln Park Zoo Chicago, Illinois

Assistant Curator
Wildlife Discovery Center at Elawa Farm
Lake Forest, Illinois

thank you for all of the info, and just for the record, my wife is a vet tech at the local reptile vet, so yes all my lizards are parasite free. the plated had coccidia and had to be treated but is now healthy as can be. and yes I plan on seperating them once i get a second. the tank is 220 gallons and his cave is at cool end. he picks and chooses where to go. during day he basks for a while with the beardies, then he goes off to explore. he is very active which is actually why i want to get him a buddy, if they breed that would be cool though!! and thanks again for the info....also he has a light blue stripe along his side, i guess this is a trait of the "sudan" plated?? on zoological imports he is labeled "major plated"

That's great that you've gotten your Plated treated and it and your other animals are clean. If you can find a mate though, I would still suggest housing them separately. They are fairly solitary. They will tolerate another Plated Lizard of the opposite sex, but will seldom use the same location to bask or hide. Also, males can relentless in pursuing females when they first meet. Also, females will vigorously bite back at the males to defend themselves from unwanted attention.

If housed together, they need to be separated for feeding or they need to be individually tong-fed. Even with tong-feeding they routinely bite each other while attempting to steal food if housed together. The only Plated Lizards that can typically be kept together with out much aggression are the G. flavivulgaris [Yellow-throat], and G. validus [Giant]. I've found keeping my Plateds separate works the best.

I built a special cage with a removable divider. I introduced them into the cage with an opaque divider to begin with, then followed that up with a clear divider for a while. I usually remove the clear divider in about late February or early March. I allow them to be together for about two weeks or so, then I separate them. I've seen copulation every time, but usually once there's been one instance of copulation that's it. The female wants nothing to do with the male and he can't get anywhere near her.

So far I've not had any success with the eggs I've gotten over the last three years. Two years the eggs were desiccated before I found them. The third year I had three great eggs, but two got too wet in the first week and spoiled and the other was fertile but had excess humidity issues as well and it didn't make it the full distance. They tend to need very high ambient humidity early in the incubation, tapering off towards the end.

Anyway, that should be enough for you to chew on for a while. Post on here and let me know if you were able to find a mate. Feel free to email me if you need help designing a breeding cage or with any other aspect of breeding or housing.
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Matt Campbell
Animal Keeper, Small Mammal/Reptile House
Lincoln Park Zoo Chicago, Illinois

Assistant Curator
Wildlife Discovery Center at Elawa Farm
Lake Forest, Illinois

thanks alot matt, that was alot of info that i did not know, but yeah i definately planned on keeping them away from the beardies, but if Leo starts harrassing the female too much i'll do like you said and either seperate them or build a divider. thanks again for all the info!!!