What behaviour have I seen in captivity that made me stop and think:
“Is this animal choosing this — or simply tolerating it?”
There’s an age-old assumption in herpetoculture; almost a belief system.
Provide the correct environment for a species and you’ll be rewarded with textbook behaviour.
Temperature? Correct.
Humidity? Correct.
Lighting? Correct.
Enclosure size? Correct.
Job done.
You can find versions of this idea in almost every care sheet available.
But what happens when your beloved bearded dragon does something that makes you stop and go—
…huh?
Because it turns out animals don’t read care sheets.
And they certainly don’t pay much attention to behavioural guides either.
Our reptiles all carry an instinctive behavioural toolbox — responses shaped by physiology, hormones, environment, history and opportunity.
I won’t go too deep into that here or I’ll be writing this article until retirement, but examples might include:
- Bearded dragons digging
- Royal pythons climbing
- Crested geckos sheltering in substrate
- Leopard geckos tail wagging
These behaviours aren’t random.
They happen for reasons.
But where things become interesting is when animals do something unexpected.
Many keepers — myself included — see unusual or out-of-character behaviour and immediately ask:
“What’s wrong?”
Sometimes that’s exactly the right question.
But sometimes the better question is:
“What if nothing is wrong?”
What if this animal isn’t coping?
What if it’s choosing?
Tolerance Is Not Preference
This isn’t a jab at anyone.
We are all guilty at some point of overhandling our animals and we are all guilty of anthropomorphising them too (Penny!!).
You know the sort of thing:
- “Look, he’s smiling.”
- “He sits like this because he likes me.”
- “He follows me because he loves me.”
The truth is usually a little more complicated and I may upset some of you with this next bit.
Your bearded dragon closing its eyes doesn’t automatically mean trust.
In some situations, eye closing can function as avoidance behaviour — effectively communicating:
“If I can’t see you, perhaps you’re not there.”
But — and this is important — behaviour rarely means one thing. That same action can appear in entirely different contexts.
One of my old boys — Gorebash (bonus points if you get the film reference) — would do exactly this after being out for a while and then promptly fall asleep.
Usually in front of the TV. Usually with me.
Context matters.
Body language matters.
A relaxed dragon isn’t simply an eye-closing dragon. It’s a loose dragon. A settled dragon.
One that sits or perches without tension.
Without constantly repositioning.
Without that subtle feeling that every muscle is waiting for an excuse.
I recently had a young lady explain to me — in impressive detail — that her 20-year-old male Horsfield tortoise loved her unconditionally because he followed her around the garden.
I had to explain as carefully as possible that her tortoise was likely doing one of two things:
Either—
people equal snacks.
Or—
slightly more likely—
he was attempting to court her footwear.
No, Horsfield tortoises do not possess an unexplained human foot fetish, but they do see shapes. Movement. Patterns. And occasionally they make some deeply unfortunate life choices.
Possibly one of the most interesting examples of tolerance rather than preference appears in discussions around RUB racks and Royal pythons.
And before anyone reaches for the comments to tell me what a terrible person I am —
RUB systems have applications. I understand why people use them.
But when a keeper tells me their Royal python “doesn’t do anything” and is “boring”, my first question is usually about enclosure opportunity.
Can Royal pythons survive in confined environments?
Yes.
Can they feed and even reproduce?
Also, yes.
But survival isn’t the same thing as expression.
Can the enclosure support climbing? Exploration? Microclimate selection? Choice?
If not - how much of what we’re observing is preference and how much is simply tolerance?
Because survival and fulfilment aren’t always the same thing.
And tolerance and survival seem to go hand in scaly hand.
Choice Changes Everything
Does anyone remember the old days?
Way back in the early 2000s, reptile-led care was spreading across the internet like wildfire. Groups formed, information was shared and people debated endlessly about the best way to do this or the most appropriate way to do that. It felt exciting. New. Progressive.
And then, for a while, it stopped.
There were no great breakthroughs in care and no uncomfortable questions being asked. We all knew everything because we all knew the same things.
I was one of those keepers.
At the time my focus was the forever-smiling leopard gecko.
Terry.
I had everything I thought I needed, which naturally meant Terry had everything I thought he could ever need.
He had the best heat mat, the best thermostat and ultra-modern LED lighting with colour-changing modes because, at the time, apparently that mattered. His enclosure had safe tiles instead of dangerous loose substrate, a little dish of calcium he could help himself to, three carefully arranged hides and a jaunty little water bowl that was changed daily.
And Terry did exactly what the books told me he should do.
He hid all day.
At night he emerged, licked some calcium, maybe ate a mealworm, had a brief wander and disappeared back into a hide.
Textbook.
I rarely feel guilt when I look back at animals I’ve kept. Learning through mistakes has taught me more than any textbook ever could.
But with Terry—
looking back—
I feel awful.
Not because he suffered. Not because he was neglected, but because I had unknowingly created a kind of behavioural purgatory.
His behaviours matched expectation so perfectly that I never stopped to ask a much more important question:
Was Terry expressing behaviour - or simply existing comfortably?
Now compare that with how Penny and I keep leopard geckos today.
Overhead heat. Ferguson Zone 1 UV. Stone and slate. Multiple hide opportunities. Diggable substrate. Varied diets. Low climbing opportunities. Temperature gradients. Humidity gradients. Live plants. Microhabitats.
And, naturally, a custom-built squash hide.
The result wasn’t a different gecko.
It was different behaviour.
Now I see digging. Climbing. Stealth basking. Open basking. Cleaning. Shedding. Crepuscular activity. Occasional daytime activity. Active hunting and the inevitable leopard gecko stare that feels capable of reading your deepest regrets.
At first, I thought husbandry had changed the animal.
But now I think something else happened.
The gecko didn’t change.
The opportunities changed.
And once choice appeared—
behaviour followed.
That doesn’t mean every enclosure needs endless complexity for complexity’s sake. It doesn’t mean fit so much stuff in there that the animal can’t turn round.
But sometimes what we interpret as calmness, laziness or inactivity isn’t preference at all.
Sometimes it’s simply an absence of options.
When Behaviour Is Compensation
Not everything comes back to the environment.
Sometimes the temperatures are right, the lighting is appropriate and the enclosure is exactly what the care guides recommend and still something doesn’t fit.
Let me tell you about Phoenix.
Phoenix is an adult bearded dragon who came to us after being rehomed because, in the previous keeper’s words, “she doesn’t do anything”.
As it turned out, she probably had a very good reason.
Phoenix presents with what I suspect to be a muscular condition affecting her mobility. Initially it looked similar to metabolic bone disease; reduced movement, altered posture and difficulty interacting with her environment. But after years of seeing MBD, something about Phoenix felt different. Her skeleton appeared stable, but movement itself seemed difficult. My suspicion became that this was muscular rather than skeletal.
Which would explain a lot.
She wasn’t inactive.
She physically couldn’t do certain things.
And that distinction changed everything.
Her enclosure had to change. Her feeding had to change. Her opportunities had to change. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy life.
Phoenix still basks, digs, hides and climbs. She just does those things differently and much closer to the ground than other bearded dragons might. She interacts with us and the kids, feeds well in her own slightly unconventional style and has developed her own version of normal.
Initially I kept her in a more standard setup and simply watched. Not because I expected her to adapt, but because I wanted to understand what she was trying to do before rebuilding her environment around her.
Once I had a plan, I changed everything.
She sulked.
Bearded dragon keepers will know exactly what I mean. Change one thing and suddenly your dragon becomes geological — completely immobile and deeply offended by your existence.
Then, after a week or so, she exploded into life.
She explored. She interacted. She began using her enclosure and eventually settled into a favourite routine of climbing onto a fake cactus, arranging herself carefully and falling asleep looking impossibly pleased with herself.
And that was the lesson.
The behaviours were still there.
They hadn’t disappeared.
They had adapted.
Phoenix taught me to stop asking:
“Why isn’t this animal behaving normally?”
And instead ask:
“What behaviour is this animal trying to express?”
Because sometimes expression doesn’t mean seeing more behaviour.
Sometimes it means recognising different behaviour.
When Weird Behaviour Means Nothing Is Wrong
Sometimes it’s just weird.
Not every unusual behaviour has an environmental explanation. Sometimes there isn’t an underlying medical issue and sometimes there isn’t a husbandry problem waiting to be solved. Occasionally animals simply do things that make you stop what you’re doing, stare at them for a moment and quietly ask:
“…why?”
And every now and then there isn’t an answer.
I have watched a leopard gecko catch its own tail in its teeth and then attempt to walk around carrying it. I’ve seen royal pythons trying to dig through substrate with all the determination of a western hognose and absolutely none of the equipment. I have observed tortoises enthusiastically digging in water and splashing themselves for reasons that remain known only to them. And then there’s Theodore, quietly breaking every unwritten rule I thought I understood about boas.
One thing I have to constantly remind myself of is a very simple idea:
Every animal is an individual.
That sounds obvious, doesn’t it?
But when you spend enough time reading care sheets, husbandry guides and even some natural history writing, it’s surprisingly easy to absorb the idea that every member of a species should behave in roughly the same way because they share environmental requirements and biological functions.
In reality, that’s rarely what happens.
Try explaining that to my climbing western hognose or my apparently terrestrial crested gecko.
Animals don’t stop being individuals just because we classify them neatly.
Leopard geckos are one of my favourite examples of this. Every leopard gecko I’ve worked with over the years seems to develop preferences. If I built three identical enclosures with matching temperatures, humidity gradients, substrate and furnishings, selected three geckos at random and introduced one into each enclosure, I would fully expect them to use those environments differently.
One may bask openly.
One may spend most of its time hidden.
One may choose humidity levels that make absolutely no sense to me.
And none of them would necessarily be wrong.
I often compare this to food preferences in people. Offer the same options to a group and someone wants pizza, someone wants Chinese, someone wants curry and somebody inevitably wants fast food.
Same species.
Same environment.
Different choices.
Maybe that’s the point.
Not every unusual behaviour needs correcting and not every preference needs explaining.
Sometimes the animal is healthy.
Sometimes the husbandry is correct.
And sometimes—
they’re just being themselves.
The Question I Ask Myself Now
The first thing I ask myself these days when working with a new animal or seeing something that doesn’t quite fit my idea of “normal” behaviour is simply—
…huh?
Now I know that sounds completely unscientific and gives absolutely no context to anything, but honestly, “huh” has become one of the most useful tools I have.
Because “huh” makes me stop.
It gives me a moment where I stop trying to explain what I’m seeing and instead actually look at the animal in front of me.
Sometimes it’s something tiny; an odd twist through the tail, a shoulder sitting slightly differently, a small muscle twitch or an eye not opening quite properly. Other times it’s dramatic; scrabbling at glass, hanging upside down from a lighting unit like some sort of scaly trapeze artist or striking enthusiastically at absolutely nothing.
The point is that behaviour usually means something.
That doesn’t mean every strange behaviour is a problem and it certainly doesn’t mean every animal needs fixing, but behaviour is information and I think that’s something we forget.
Behavioural changes can happen because of discomfort, hormones, changes in heat and light, previous experience, environmental opportunity, compensation for injury or sometimes simply because an animal has decided to do something completely inexplicable.
And I think that’s where I’ve changed the most as a keeper.
Years ago, I would have asked myself how to stop the behaviour or bring the animal back to what I expected to see.
Now I ask different questions.
What is this animal gaining from this?
What is it avoiding?
What changed?
What happens if I offer another option?
The longer I work with reptiles, the less interested I become in whether behaviour is normal and the more interested I become in whether it makes sense to that individual.
Animals don’t read care sheets.
They don’t know they’re behaving incorrectly.
They simply respond to the world in front of them.
And if we slow down enough to watch—
sometimes they tell us far more than we expected.
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