Reptile Science Digest: Leopard Gecko Enrichment!

kaijutegu:

At least two behavioral measures of good welfare increased in captive leopard geckos with every type of enrichment used.

  • (With the exception of the visual enrichment, which was a mirror that let the geckos see their reflections.)

The Citation: Meredith J. Bashaw, Mallory D. Gibson, Devan M. Schowe, Abigail S. Kucher. Does enrichment improve reptile welfare? Leopard geckos (Eublepharis macularius) respond to five types of environmental enrichment. Applied Animal Behaviour Science: In press, available online 25 August 2016.

The Article: link here! It’s a docdroid link, which is the site I like to use for uploading PDFs. Clicking that link will not start an automatic download, but will open the PDF in your browser instead. It may load funny at first. If it does, give it a moment and then refresh if it doesn’t fix itself!

The Take-Away: 

  • Enrichment is really important for your reptile’s overall wellness!
  • You can provide enrichment in even a simple tub and plastic hide basic enclosure and your gecko will benefit.
  • Much of the value of enrichment is based on novelty and variety. Enrichment doesn’t mean just cluttering up the cage or adding more hides! It means adding stuff to do and adding new stuff to do!
  • Enrichment introduces small changes, not major environmental shake-ups.
  • Enrichment doesn’t have to be complicated! You can make or buy many simple items that will improve your gecko’s quality of life!

Want to know why? There’s loads of science after the jump!

Keep reading

tl:dr: if you give your geckos stuff to do, they’ll do the stuff and seem to enjoy it.

This applies to all reptiles, though the type of enrichment that’s best will vary between them. Smelly things and things containing food are usually good bets.

stability:

image

For those commenting about it, no, the polar bear did not die just because of being kept in California.

The San Diego Zoo keeps two polar bears, and the way they keep the bears healthy is they put the bears on a low-fat diet. The bears have considerably less body fat than wild bears, which means they don’t have as much insulation, since they don’t need the fat to insulate them against the frigid cold. The bears look thinner than wild polar bears, since they are, but they’re perfectly healthy and their weight is stable. Because of their lower body fat, they’re comfortable in the heat, and have their pool to retreat into when it gets too hot. In fact, the zoo has to heat their pool in the winter or they won’t go into it. Having the bears on a low-fat diet is much easier and more reliable than chilling the entire enclosure. That’s how a good zoo handles polar bear care. 

SeaWorld is not a good zoo. 

unicornempire:

I love that Leverage really goes out of it’s way to show us that just because you break the ‘rules’, it doesn’t mean you’re breaking the rules. Rules and laws and society are all made up, at the end of the day, and all you really have is your own moral compass and sense of justice; is this just to you? Is it right? Should it be OK for companies to put people in insurmountable debt for the rest of their lives just because our medical care is so expensive in this modern day and age? No law or rule should change what you know in your heart is right and wrong, and I think that’s the key thing that makes someone a good person in my eyes.