You likely have two reptiles or planning on buying a second one from a different species. It’s therefore not surprising if you have asked yourself “Can Bearded Dragons And Leopard Geckos Live Together?”. The short answer is No bearded dragons and geckos cannot live together.
We detailed 5 reasons why this is not such a good idea.
Size
Leopard geckos are small lizards compared to bearded dragons. Indeed, a fully grown beardie can be as big as 16-24 inches long and weigh about 0.62-1.1 pounds.
Adult males geckos are about 7.9 to 11.0 in in length and weigh about 0.13 to 0.17 pounds.
You can clearly see the physical disparities in both lizards.
Enclosure requirements
Both reptiles are from different regions. Indeed, beardies are from Australia which is dessert and hot, whereas leopard geckos are from Pakistan which is known to be in the temperate zone.
This implies that both reptiles have different housing requirements.
Housing requirements of bearded dragons
Bearded dragons are diurnal [1] animals. This mean they are most active during the day and spend most of the night sleeping. Almost like humans.
Furthermore, beardies need their enclosure to be bright and hot.
They need a minimum of 40 gallon habitat to live in comfort.
Housing requirements of geckos
Contrary to beardies, leopard geckos are most active during the night. They are nocturnal [2] lizards.
They don’t require lots of light in their habitat. As you can see both beardies and geckos have different enclosure needs for humidity and light.
Stressful and anxious situation for both
Bearded dragons are territorial therefore you don’t want to put them together with geckos.
The beardie may feel that the gecko is intruding thus aggressing it which could lead to the gecko’s death.
Interressingly, male leopard geckos are also territorial and may fight to protect their space. This would inevitably lead to them being injured or kill by the beardies.
This constant flighting causes stress for both animals.
Health challenges (Parasites)
Both beardies and geckos carry parasites. So the next problem is that if you get two of them to cohabitate in an habitat is that if one gets a disease the other will likely catch it as well.
So what would happen if you put a leopard gecko and bearded dragon in the same tank?
As you may have guessed, if you house these two species together it may end poorly for the gecko. It could be injured at best and even be killed in the worst case scenario.
Note that bearded dragons are omnivorous. This implies that they won’t hesitate to eat anything smaller than them.
Because leopard gecko is considerably smaller than an adult beardie, the gecko would live in fear until the bearded dragon eventually catches and eats it.
This obvisouly could also be dangerous for the beardie as it can choke on trying to eat the leo.
In Summary
You may have your reasons for wanting to house beardies and leopard geckos. No matter what your situation is, it’s never a good idea to force reptiles to cohabitate, especially if they are from different species.
Furthermore owning two species mean you need to acquire extensive knowledge of both.
If you want to have more than one reptile, you need to be able to give each its own space.
Resources
[1] Diurnal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diurnality
[2] Nocturnal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocturnality
My name is Brad and I am the main editor of BeardieZilla.com.
The only goal of this site is quite simply to be able to help you. To help you by the means of my experiment, of the relation which I maintain with my bearded dragon as well as some of my knowledge about beardies.
I hope that you will find answers to some of your most pressing questions here.
Thank you for stopping by and enjoy the blog!
- Are you supposed to clip a bearded dragon’s nails? - October 21, 2022
- What do you do when you first get a bearded dragon? - October 21, 2022
- What is the best vegetable for bearded dragons? - October 21, 2022