- Joined
- Jan 8, 2008
- Messages
- 601
pardon my alliteration.
I used to have two adorable crested geckos, one male, one female. I had introduced them three months ago. I had been expecting the female to start laying eggs a month ago, but got nothing. I never saw the two mate. The male had some deformities due to improper nutrition from his previous life in the pet store. I was thinking maybe the deformity was preventing him from being able to mate.
Anyways, the male died suddenly about a week ago, due to a rectal prolapse. It was all very sad, watching him die while there was nothing to be done about it (he died while we were discussing our options).
Since then, the female hadn't been as active as she normally was. Today I found her dead, but with no apparent cause.
needless to say, we will not be obtaining any new cresties for a very long time. Its just been a painful week for us (we also lost one of our oldest snakes, from old age). Still, it would be nice to know what happened. They had a nice big enclosure to hop around in, were being fed crested gecko diet with a few crickets every now and then, and seemed to be doing very well until very recently. Heck, the male was being very active just two days before he died.
we did notice that before he died, the female was sitting close by, just staring at him. While I have observed several small mammals, and birds, go through a period of depression while mourning the loss of a partner, I highly doubt that was the case here, as I haven't heard of that type of emotion in reptiles. My sister chooses to believe it was something along those lines, because she doesn't think we will ever really know anyways.
Anyways, I just thought I'd share these recent events, and see if anyone might have any ideas on what could have caused these deaths so close to each other.
I used to have two adorable crested geckos, one male, one female. I had introduced them three months ago. I had been expecting the female to start laying eggs a month ago, but got nothing. I never saw the two mate. The male had some deformities due to improper nutrition from his previous life in the pet store. I was thinking maybe the deformity was preventing him from being able to mate.
Anyways, the male died suddenly about a week ago, due to a rectal prolapse. It was all very sad, watching him die while there was nothing to be done about it (he died while we were discussing our options).
Since then, the female hadn't been as active as she normally was. Today I found her dead, but with no apparent cause.
needless to say, we will not be obtaining any new cresties for a very long time. Its just been a painful week for us (we also lost one of our oldest snakes, from old age). Still, it would be nice to know what happened. They had a nice big enclosure to hop around in, were being fed crested gecko diet with a few crickets every now and then, and seemed to be doing very well until very recently. Heck, the male was being very active just two days before he died.
we did notice that before he died, the female was sitting close by, just staring at him. While I have observed several small mammals, and birds, go through a period of depression while mourning the loss of a partner, I highly doubt that was the case here, as I haven't heard of that type of emotion in reptiles. My sister chooses to believe it was something along those lines, because she doesn't think we will ever really know anyways.
Anyways, I just thought I'd share these recent events, and see if anyone might have any ideas on what could have caused these deaths so close to each other.
