FAQ: General Care of Bearded Dragons

Are they social creatures, do they need company?
Bearded Dragons are not social creatures. People may project their emotional interpretations on them but they are generally perfectly content living a life of solitude. They do have a social structure for mating and communicating with each other. Head bobbing is the most often noticed means of communication. It is used to convey dominance. The arm wave conveys submissiveness.

When I hold my Bearded Dragon he squirms and scratches me. Am I doing something wrong?
Do not hold him! Let him hold you. The tighter you squeeze the more he will fight. Support him, do not try to restrain him, just let him hold onto you. Make sure he has a firm footing, letting him grab onto the front of your shirt/on hold onto your shoulder will make him more comfortable. Small BDs are usually wilder than sub adults or adults. When they are small, let them hold onto your fingers.

What kind of Bearded Dragon do I have, what morph is this?
Bearded Dragons come in all different colors and patterns. Normals are browns and dark earth tones, some light patches of white or off white. Some breeders give names to colors and patterns as a marketing tool. A red or orange Bearded Dragon may be called a Blood or my line, a Florida Orange. Colors include Snow/Grey, Red/Orange, Translucent, Albino, Citrus, Green, Yellow/Gold and various combinations. Another color morph is called "hypo" short for hypomelanistic. This simply means a reduced amount of melanin or black coloring. Many Bearded Dragons that have a light or pastel color will be sold as hypos. Those with almost no color and clear nails are often marketed as Leucistic. This is a misnomer as there have yet to be any true Leucistic Bearded Dragons that I am aware of.

Phenotype and genotype is the difference between what a Bearded Dragon looks like physically and what they are genetically. Just because a Bearded Dragon is a certain color, does not make him a particular morph. If two orange Bearded Dragons have a yellow offspring, even though the color is yellow, he is of orange lineage and will probably throw more orange babies than yellow. The yellow is a fluke. This is why people who breed for color charge more. They are selling animals that genetically have better odds of producing a particular color and a better chance that offspring will grow up that way too.

I bought an orange Bearded Dragon but he is not orange. Did I get ripped off?
Probably not if you purchased from a reputable breeder. Bearded Dragons can have dramatic changed in color over their first year or so. I have seen bright animals turn dull and drab brown animals turn bright colors. It is very possible and not uncommon for normal Bearded Dragons to give birth to colorful babies. The question is, will they stay that way and can they pass that color on to future generations. Bearded Dragon genetics is still a bit of a mystery. Two things we do know is that line breeding is BAD and can cause an abundance of problems and second, by breeding multiple generations of animals with a particular color trait, that color is more likely to be passed on. The hard part is finding a pair of Bearded Dragons with the color trait you want that are not related.

What are the dots on the underside of my Bearded Dragons back legs?
They are called femoral pores. Sometimes they are more pronounced on males but this should not be used as a sexing method. It is believed that they are used by the male to get a better grip on the female for mating.