[dykey]

Hey guys,

I know that you will understand as well as me that Coleonyx Mitratus is a ground-dwelling breed of Gecko. I am new to owning such species, and I currently own one, eight-month old male.

This gecko spends most of the time hiding, with the odd few laps of it's terrarium in the evenings - a habit which I both expected, and understand until yesterday, at separate points in the evening, I noticed it sitting on top of some of the hides, almost basking (which we understand to be something less desired by the Coleonyx species). Now these are 2 "Exo-Terra" rock hides, one small, the other medium which wouldn't be overly difficult to negotiate for a 3" long juvenile gecko. Here's the wierd part...

About 30 mins ago, I went into my room to see if Dynx would be out in his terrarium as it was roughly 10:30pm, only to find him ontop of my rock formation, which is at least 8" high, and I cannot really fathom a straight forward way for the gecko to have scaled up it? It's not particularly climbable? As I went to take a photo, it basically jumped off so I never got the shot but literally 10mins later, I returned to find that he was on top again?

Has anyone experienced anything similar with Coleonyx of any species? And further to that, regardless of the gecko being able to climb being odd, is this behaviour something I should look into?

Let me know your thoughts, as I am baffled!!! It's pretty awesome seeing him up high, looking down on his terrarium though!

- Lou

[gbhil]

IME, mitratus will explore all areas of it's enclosure once settled in. I often see them climbing plants, wood and rocks, just as often as digging into the substrate under anything flat.

[rattlesnake082]

I totally agree with gbhil.

It's not unusual that mitratus climb on all the stuff that's in the terrarium.

In my experience climbing and especially sitting on the highest spot in the terrarium is a kind of behaviour that is more shown by males. My biggest breeder male is sitting on the highest spot every single night. Interestingly enough, my female mitratus don't. To me it seems like a "look at me, I'm the king of this viv"-thing.

No need to worry about that...it's something totally normal.

Hope that helps

-Martin

[ptenopus]

I have found elegans (closely related) climbing up near verticle dirt hillsides in the wild, and also variegatus climbing sheer rock walls,and also small shrubs. So they do have the ability to climb even though they lack lamelle, and may do so to hunt, thermoregulate, or maybe for the view...

[Lizardman]

Hi!

I keep my Coleonyx elegans pair in a exo-terra terrarium 45x45x60 cm.
I've seen them both climbing at the background all the way to the top of the enclosure, then they just walked all the way down to the ground without jumping.

So in my experience they are very good at climbing. I agree with you that they will explore the whole terrarium.

Regards
Niclas

[JeffP]

Hey all, I just thought I would share a little something I noticed with my mitratus pair recently. I was keeping them together and my male was the only one who would show his mug, always out exploring his territory as soon as the lights went out typical right. So a couple days ago I seperated them to drop temps for a couple months and my shy little girl is all about coming out to say hello now. Its cazy because I would only get to see her during cleaning or a quick snout flash when she would snag a worm from her hide super elusive. So why the sudden change, was it the temp drop (only 4 degrees) or does she miss her boyfriend hrmmm.....maybe she is happy he?s gone. Well I just thought this was interesting and wanted to share. A couple questions while Im here. What have you guys done as far as winter cooling for these guys? If figured since CENTRAL AMERICA (bold for next question) is so close to the equator they dont even have much of a winter. So like I said I seperated and dropped hot spot temps from 87

[JeffP]

(WTF......ps3!!!) any way to 83 degrees. What kind of drops have you guys had success with do I even need one? They are both still active they dont eat as much though, I dont know if I should stop the feeding and keep dropping temps. And my second question if you guys haven't fallen asleep yet . Why do keepers in Europe refer to mitratus as mexican banded gecko? It was my understanding that C.elegans are found in the south of mexico but C.mitratus was found more east IE guatamala through to costa rica. Can someone shed some light on this? Thanks for reading hope to hear from you.