Just want to share an awful pic of my red tegu. I gotta this little fellow from SCALES (thanks guys!). He was brumating for the past few months, but he has woken up now to terrorize insects and pinkies. He eats his pinks like a champ! I'm really proud of him. (Yes he's male.) I have very few lizards. Count them 1 and 2. However, my large lizard collection (
) will soon be joined by a fire skink from Lowell Shaw.
In any case, I'm in love with this tegu. He enjoys walks outside, tail whipping, but never biting! I keep him near the computer to watch him and it's amazing to see how he watches me. He'll even hide himself while he's eating.
What really amazes me is that tegus actually eat fruit in the wild. Fruit making up 50% of their diet as adults. Truly awesome!!
Here's a horrendous pic of my tegu. He looks kinda groggy. They grow up to be fairly large lizards (they grow to 4feet +), but are docile. When he gets full size he will need a cage of 6x3. Which is A-ok by me as we have a house full of empty space, but I plan to have a little outdoor pen for him for parts of the summer.
Anyhow, here's the pic.
<img src=http://img48.photobucket.com/albums/v147/Kattia/tegu1.jpg>
This is a species I've long been interested in, and seeing pictures like this and hearing the description you gave makes me want them even more. Maybe it's time I started looking even more seriously into it. Oh, and I might also be getting a fire skink from Lowell, so we'll have siblings we can compare notes on. 
Hybrid Mode
