Why ‘Normal Behaviour’ Doesn’t Exist

As keepers, we’ve all heard the phrase before - “Don’t worry, that’s perfectly normal.” and usually, hearing it feels good.

Normal is comforting.

Normal means your animal is healthy, behaving correctly and doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing. It lets you relax. It closes the conversation and reassures you that everything is fine.

But the older I get and the more animals I work with, the more I find myself asking a slightly awkward question:

What actually is normal?

Normal compared to what?

Normal for the species?

Normal for the age?

Normal for the season?

Normal for captivity?

Or normal for the individual animal sitting in front of you?

Because the problem with normal is that it sounds objective, but most of the time it’s an average. A collection of observations repeated often enough that they become expectation and expectations are useful.

Until an animal ignores them.

I’m not saying species behaviour doesn’t exist. Of course it does. Natural history matters. Behavioural trends matter. Care sheets matter.

But individual animals don’t live as averages.

They live as individuals.

And somewhere along the way I realised something—

normal shouldn’t be the end of the conversation.

Normal should be the beginning of it.

Species Behaviour Exists (Please Don’t Throw Science Out)

This part is important because whenever conversations like this happen, somebody inevitably assumes the conclusion is that species behaviour doesn’t exist and we should all just ignore science entirely.

Absolutely not.

Without science, natural history and careful observation of animals in their natural environments, we would not be able to keep these animals responsibly at all.

Expectation matters.

We expect leopard geckos to spend the majority of the day hidden and inactive.

We expect crested geckos to climb impossible surfaces and perform regular maintenance on their own eyeballs.

We expect corn snakes to look at food with the intensity of a Victorian orphan seeing bread.

Those expectations aren’t arbitrary. They come from years of observation, research and collective experience. They matter because they give us a starting point.

Without those expectations, husbandry becomes guesswork.

But that’s all they are - a starting point.

Because eventually every keeper encounters an animal that quietly ignores the script.

The Sulcata tortoises that doesn’t dig – Lovely Agnes

The boa that never behaves defensively – Hello Theodore

The False Chameleon that thinks it can fly – Beautiful Duckie

The beardie that compensates for a physical limitation – Beloved Phoenix and her issues

And suddenly you realise something uncomfortable:

Species descriptions explain tendencies.

Individuals express behaviour.

Care sheets matter, care guides are desperately important, natural history is one of the greatest tools we have.

But all of those things work in averages.

And averages are descriptions.

They are not behavioural predictions.

Individuals Break Averages Constantly

This is probably one of the most important things I’ve ever written and, unfortunately, it’s not particularly complicated.

Individuals are unique.

That sounds painfully obvious when written down, but we often forget it when we start talking about species. We expect consistency. We expect patterns. We expect behaviours to arrive neatly packaged alongside temperatures, humidity ranges and feeding schedules.

But individuals have a habit of ignoring us.

Agnes, my sulcata tortoise, is probably one of my favourite examples.

She’s an eight-year-old, twenty-kilogram bulldozer. Interactive, inquisitive, endlessly entertaining and fully capable of reminding you she owns a set of jaws if you become complacent.

Now if you open almost any care guide on sulcatas, you’ll read about burrowing behaviour. Deep excavations. Extensive digging. Huge earthworks.

Agnes has never dug a hole in her life.

Not once.

She has looked at every description ever written about African bulldozers and politely decided it wasn’t for her.

Then there’s Theodore.

Boa constrictors are often described as defensive, food motivated and quick to remind you they are a very large constrictor when sufficiently annoyed.

Someone forgot to mention that to my seven-and-a-half-foot lad.

I regularly describe Theodore as a scaly puppy. He remains one of the calmest, most tolerant and consistently polite snakes I’ve ever worked with.

Then we have Duckie.

A Cuban False Chameleon. Slow-moving. Deliberate. Built to move through branches and spend her life eating snails.

Except mine appears to have interpreted all of that as optional.

She launches herself through life with complete confidence and only a passing respect for physics while maintaining one of the broadest diets of any reptile I keep.

And then there’s Phoenix.

Mobility limitations mean she cannot behave like the average bearded dragon.

But she still basks. Still explores. Still digs. Still climbs.

She just does it her way.

None of these animals are wrong. None of them invalidate science.

They simply remind me that averages describe populations.

Individuals create behaviour.

If behaviour followed species descriptions perfectly, reptile keeping would be incredibly easy.

And please allow me to assure you—

it really isn’t.

Behaviour Is Information, Not Morality

This was probably one of the biggest changes in how I think about animals.

I used to accidentally assign value to behaviour.

• Good animal
• Bad animal
• Friendly
• Aggressive
• Lazy
• Stubborn
• Confident

And whilst those descriptions feel useful, they often tell us more about how we feel than what the animal is actually doing.

Take defensive behaviour.

A snake strikes and suddenly we describe it as angry. But was it angry? Or was it startled? Cold? Unwell? Protecting a resource? Trying to create distance?

Likewise, we see an animal sit quietly and describe it as calm.

Maybe it is.

Maybe it’s hiding. Maybe it’s avoiding. Maybe it simply has no reason to move.

Behaviour isn’t morality.

Animals aren’t making ethical decisions. They aren’t trying to be difficult. They aren’t trying to upset us.

Behaviour is usually information.

Sometimes that information is simple.

“I’m warm.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Leave me alone.”

Sometimes it’s more complicated.

“This enclosure doesn’t work for me.”

“That movement hurts.”

“This isn’t how I want to interact with my environment.”

And occasionally—

it means absolutely nothing at all, and your lizard has decided today is the day physics becomes optional, tortoises don’t dig and boas aren’t defensive at all.

The point isn’t to stop interpreting behaviour, it’s to stop assuming we already know the answer because the question changes.

Instead of asking—

Why is this animal behaving badly?

You start asking—

What is this animal trying to tell me?

The Question I Ask Myself Now

After all this time, after all the care sheets, observations, mistakes, experiments, rescues and moments spent staring into an enclosure wondering what on earth I’m looking at, the biggest question I still ask myself is surprisingly simple:

Huh?

Not exactly scientific on paper, I know.

But for me, “huh” has become incredibly useful because it creates a pause. It forces me to stop reacting and start observing. It gives me a moment to focus entirely on the animal in front of me rather than immediately filtering what I’m seeing through expectation.

Because the easiest thing in the world when something unexpected happens is to label it.

The snake is defensive. The gecko is lazy. The dragon is stressed. The tortoise is stubborn.

But the more animals I’ve worked with, the more I’ve realised those labels often tell me more about what I expected than what the animal is actually doing.

So now, when something catches my attention, I try to stop and ask myself a different question.

What am I actually seeing?

Not what I expected to see.

Not what the species description suggested I should see.

What is the animal in front of me doing right now?

Sometimes the answer is subtle. A slight change in posture. A tail position that looks unusual. A shoulder that rotates differently. An eye that doesn’t seem to open properly. A basking spot being ignored for no obvious reason.

Sometimes it’s less subtle.

Glass surfing. Refusing food. Digging when nothing appears wrong. A lizard attempting to violate several laws of physics in one enthusiastic leap.

But instead of asking why the behaviour is wrong, I’ve found myself asking something else entirely:

What is this behaviour trying to convey?

Because behaviour isn’t usually random.

Sometimes it’s preference. Sometimes it’s compensation. Sometimes it’s discomfort. Sometimes it’s curiosity. Sometimes it’s environmental and sometimes, frustratingly, it appears to mean absolutely nothing at all.

But asking the question almost always teaches me more than assuming I already know the answer.

And more often than not, the animal ends up correcting me.

Which, inconveniently and wonderfully, is probably why I still enjoy this so much.