As other members have stressed beardies are
solitary and
territorial creatures and so should always be housed alone.
It is one of the most frustrating thing as a dragon lover that ignorant pet stores insist that this is acceptable. It sends people off with utterly false information which can end horrifically for the dragons, or end the owner up with a whacking great extra spend on a whole new set of equipment.
Unfortunatly you only need a liscence to sell reptiles. You do not need any special training or education to run a reptile store.
SOME reptiles can happily co-habit, however most store lack the in depth knowledge to understand that this is not the case for bearded dragons.
Asside from dominance and territorial issues it is always a dreadful idea to house males and females together.
This can lead to over breeding, or breeding two young, both which put your females dragons health at serious risk, let alone the stress. If you have watched any clips on youtube of dragons mating you will see it is a very aggressive act.
Males can literally breed a female to death if given the chance. Even professional breeders do not allow males and females to cohabit. They are allowed to meet once for copulation out side of the vivs and then seperated immediately.
Mating asside, when beardies are housed together one usually becomes dominant causing the other beardie to not grow properly due to stress, although sometimes stress does not manifest itself physically.
This is another missrepresented fact by "common knowledge". Behaviour such as arm waving, head bobbing and sitting on top of one another are all signals of dominance, submission and stress. Yet these are the very characteristics that *****ic store workers sell dragons for!
"Oh they are fascinating. Look how she waves all day long"
Yet the poor dragon is constantly defensive and afraid in her own viv.
The most serious and obvious issue of cohabiting dragons is violence.
Futhermore beardies can and do attack eachother, and unfortunatly dragons are not like dogs, who can be taught about naughty aggressive behaviour. They can live in apparent harmony for months and then one day snap and thats it.
One story that comes to mind is a girl on these forums named Ambulance. She housed two dragons together happily for months and came home one day to find the female had ripped the other dragons tail completely off.
Once it has happened once, it will happen again and again.
Dragons will think nothing of nipping off a chunk or tail/toe in order to defend their basking spot, unfortunatly it is just in their nature.
I dont mean to scare or scold you by any means, but I want you to show you what can happen:
In my time keeping dragons I have rescued three dragons who were living in a viv with other dragons.
This is Dexter. Rescued as an adult.
Dex was small for her age and was missing a bit of her tail, most of her right arm, most of her right foot and alot of her toes.
This is Ruben. Rescued at two months old.
Ruben had his leg and arms ripped off at the joints by his clutchmates.
This is Miso. Rescued at
only 3 weeks old
Little Miso, already has a tail nip and is missing most of her back toes.
There are rare cases where dragons show no signs of agression towards eachother, and there isnt too much bullying but it is a risk that is simply not worth taking as Im sure you now understand.
I would suggest you separate your beardies when you can offer them seperate habitats.
They will lead much happier lives alone.
Holly
.
