When I approached my geckos enclosure this afternoon, he exited his hide to greet me. At this time, I was flattening out his mulch substrate and sifting it around. I noticed that this movement had caught his attention, and so I pulled out his feeding tweezers and started moving them around the enclosure, and he proceeded to chase them back and forth. With this being said, it raised my question if whether this was just natural instinct to investigate the object and determine if it was food, or if African fat tails are capable of play. Does anyone have an opinion?
Are African fat tailed geckos capable of play?
- Thread starter VerdLord
- Start date
Geckos are cold-blooded, which means they have to conserve their energy as much as possible. It's not as easy for them to 'replace' it as it is for warm-blooded creatures such as humans. They use their energy sparingly, playing would basically waste it. They need to have what it takes to run from danger, fight, or whatever, and still hope to have enough energy left to repeat it if need be. They'll rest for hours, not because they're lazy, but it saves their precious energy.
It is possible that your gecko might be curious about what you were doing, but I highly doubt he'd be interested in playing. At most he'd be checking to make sure he's not in danger, or possibly he recognized the tweezers and thought it was feeding time.
It is possible that your gecko might be curious about what you were doing, but I highly doubt he'd be interested in playing. At most he'd be checking to make sure he's not in danger, or possibly he recognized the tweezers and thought it was feeding time.
Herpin Man
Member
Geckos don’t play. It followed the tweezers looking for food.