I would love to see some of that video if you publish it on your site!
I have six Leopard geckos, and all of a sudden in the last week, two of them have
started to dig. They are in separate tanks. I was wondering if this is normal for
Leopards. One of them is on orchid bark and dug a cave under her water dish and slept
under there with just here head peeking out, and the other one is on Calci-sand and
dug a hole under her "bark tunnel" and just lies in it. It was quite interesting to
observe.
I have been thinking about getting an African Fat-tail gecko. Is their care and
disposition like that of the Leopards?
:o) Tobey
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In a message dated Fri, 12 Jan 2001 6:31:56 PM Eastern Standard Time, Beverly
Erlebacher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
I have an array of LEDs that emit light at a near-infrared frequency
just beyond human vision, and a miniature black-and-white video
camera sensitive to light of this frequency (as well as visible
light). The system was originally designed for "night-vision"
stealth surveillance.
Many thanks to those people here in r.p.h who reassured me my fat
tailed gecko's nocturnal activities would not be disturbed by the
near-infrared light; that indeed geckos probably cannot see at all
into the infrared (but instead probably see well into the UV at the
other end of the spectrum).
I set the system up and shot six hours of video last night. It
worked pretty well! The room was quite dark; natural light being
provided only by moon and stars through the window. But he was quite
active and made his way around the terrarium with ease. Those large
deep eyes (which I regard as his most endearing feature) must really
provide him great night vision.
I positioned his water dish directly in front of the camera, and I
got a superb shot of him drinking. This was my main objective; I had
never seen him drink before, and I wondered whether he realized the
water dish was even there. But the stealth video shows him
sauntering right up and lapping it with his tongue as though from
long familiar habit.
He tried to climb the walls and corners. He made a great show of
climbing the thermometer that was suction-cupped to the glass, which
got him nearly to the top of the terrarium (though I have a screen
cover). He spent a lot of time digging up the orchid bark in the
corners.
He dug a new tunnel entrance to his shelter, even though his shelter
has regular openings at the front and rear. The rest of the night,
he used this new tunnel as entrance and exit instead of using the
regular openings.
The video captured only 6 hours (I've got to get one of those 8-hour
blank tapes). In the morning we could not find him anywhere! He was
apparently missing! Then we saw a moving hump under the substrate.
He had dug down and buried himself. I originally placed a layer of
fabric against the bottom glass to prevent him getting burned by the
UTH in case he dug down. But he was even under the layer of fabric!
Realizing his tendancy to dig, I decided to add two inches of extra
orchid bark / moss to give him something to really dig in. And I've
got to find a way to attach the fabric to the glass bottom so there's
no chance he can get under the fabric again. That UTH gets pretty
hot.
Does anyone else have a fat tail who likes to dig?
If I buy a capture card for my computer I might put some gecko night
stealth videos on my web page. Is anyone interested in seeing
them?
>From Dan in Palo Alto
(Remove the three Bs to Email me)
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