Nereida, my Columbian Tegu

A few pics of Nereida, my Columbian Tegu, Tupinambis teguixin ssp. She is a sweetheart. She's looking much better than when we took her in back in January.

Another beautiful pet lizard you have there.

How big is she really? I can't tell from the photo.
You seem to have mostly "she" pets. Are you sure this is a female or you just call it "she" when you can't be sure of the gender?

No, she is 99.9% likely a she. Most lizards you sex pretty easily after they are subadults. The young arboreal boas and pythons I can't sex yet I call he or she based on my best educated guess. She is about 3' long nose to tail tip. Here is a video of her wandering her tank.

Nereida is really really pretty! Love the faces of these. But I am sad to announce that your video won't play as it is "private".

How old is she? There are 5 subadult Columbian tegus at the school, they are very cute (if extremely feisty) little dudes, probably around 2' long nose to tail; but I am bad at judging lengths with eyes alone. I've heard that one of the two popular tegus, Argentine and Columbian, one has a nasty reputation for making poorly mannered pets. But you said Nereida is a sweetheart, so are Columbians the more aggressive of the two?

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Sorry, I meant to ask if Columbians are the LESS aggressive of the two, hahaha.

Ok, the video should be fixed, sorry.

I don't know how old she its, I'm guessing she is probably two this year. I basically took her in as a rescue. The argentine black & whites, Tupinambis merianae, & the reds, Tupinambis rufescens, get bigger, and tend to be calmer, so they are said to make better pets. The columbians, like this girl, stay smaller, and are definitely more active, a bit more monitor like in personality, so people say they aren't as good as pets. I don't necessarily agree with that, they are different though. She is tame as can be, gets along with the cats, kids, etc... But she is active. Not aggressive, just very active and higher energy. But I would say it really depends what you are looking for in a pet.

That's my girl!! She really is very sweet and reminds me almost of a dog when you start talking to her.she gets all excited and wants to come out of her cage. the cats are more wary of her then she is of them. Our tonkinese cat almost wants to play but is still unsure of the hairless thing trudging around on the bed!

I just watched the video. That is one really active lizard!
Most lizards I've seen would just stay there really claim for a very long time with only their lungs moving.
Are all Columbian Tegu this active?

Oh yeah, it has a bigger tongue than I expected.

Depends on the species. Columbian tegus are more active than their larger cousins, hence the reason the columbians are said to be not as good as pets by some people. But I like them, much more active. Tegus and monitors have forked tongues similar to snakes, that they use to"taste"the air, utilizing their Jacobsons organ.

I have never been very big on the whole reptile thing but I have to admit, she is actually kind of cute.

What a handsome girl!!! And I loved seeing the video of her. Quite the tongue she has on her! LOL ;-)
I like lizards & snakes. So cool! I like bats too. I think you should get some pet bats now and post some cool stuff about them! I wonder if anyone around here has pet bats??? ;-)

We had some kind of a salamander that came to our house one year, a long time ago. It was weird because you just don't see salamanders around in Michigan! I guess they live here, but this was the first one I'd ever seen in my life, outside of a zoo. I remember it had red markings. I wanted to keep it, but we knew nothing about keeping a reptile alive, and thought it best to leave it in the wild. I never saw it or another one again. Am I wrong about them being related to lizards? Are they a lizard or more of a frog? Cool, whatever they are!

Salamanders are amphibians. So I guess you could call them a cross between a frog and lizard. No bats here, though it would be neat to own a flying fox. I'll get some pics of our tonkinese for you though.

This is the first time I am seeing such a beautiful monitor lizard. The ones that I have seen here are just dull gray in color. Some can grow to very big sizes. I have seen one that's not less than four feet from nose to tail. Sadly these monitor lizards are not welcome in Malaysia. They are killed, more or less, on sight. In Thailand, they are welcomed but also killed on sight. For food.

All the off-topic hijacking posts had been moved to this thread. Please stay on the topic.

(06-21-2012, 06:53 PM)Victor Leigh Wrote: This is the first time I am seeing such a beautiful monitor lizard. The ones that I have seen here are just dull gray in color. Some can grow to very big sizes. I have seen one that's not less than four feet from nose to tail. Sadly these monitor lizards are not welcome in Malaysia. They are killed, more or less, on sight. In Thailand, they are welcomed but also killed on sight. For food.

Thanks Victor, she is quite pretty. Actually, tegus are not monitors, they are pretty distantly related, though they do fill some similar niches in south america, and this type, the columbian Tegu, has some very similar mannerisms to some of the smaller monitors in Indonesia & Malaysia. Its actually a very cool example of convergent evolution in my opinion.