do leo's require UVA lighting?

[GothicGurrrl]

Hey,
I was just wondering about lighting..

I know that leo's do not require UVB light as they are nocturnal and cannot absorb the UV rays anyway.. but I was learning about UVA lighting in my exotics management class the other day.. and I was curious whether leo's need a happy light?

 

[roger]

Hey,
I was just wondering about lighting..

I know that leo's do not require UVB light as they are nocturnal and cannot absorb the UV rays anyway.. but I was learning about UVA lighting in my exotics management class the other day.. and I was curious whether leo's need a happy light?

No

 

[GothicGurrrl]

haha thanks for your simple answer
I always worry that I'm not providing everything my leo needs

 

[M_surinamensis]

Hey,
I was just wondering about lighting..

I know that leo's do not require UVB light as they are nocturnal and cannot absorb the UV rays anyway.. but I was learning about UVA lighting in my exotics management class the other day.. and I was curious whether leo's need a happy light?

Your initial premise, the basis for your question, is incorrect.

They aren't nocturnal. They are crepuscular. There is a difference. They do utilize UV in assisting with D3 synthesis, they just happen to be particularly efficient at doing so and consequentially do not generally require UV supplementation in captivity.

Light intensity, spectrum, duration and angle can provoke behavioral changes. Happy is the wrong word but altered stimulus will potentially produce altered responses and light is a factor that is linked to seasonal triggers and altered behavior patterns. It is not something that is too pronounced in leos though, I suspect most owners wouldn't notice when the animal's activity period shifts by twenty minutes or notice breeding behaviors when the animals are housed individually.

 

[roger]

haha thanks for your simple answer
I always worry that I'm not providing everything my leo needs

No problem.i tend to keep things simple LOL

 

[yellermelon]

No

 

[GothicGurrrl]

Your initial premise, the basis for your question, is incorrect.

They aren't nocturnal. They are crepuscular. There is a difference. They do utilize UV in assisting with D3 synthesis, they just happen to be particularly efficient at doing so and consequentially do not generally require UV supplementation in captivity.

Light intensity, spectrum, duration and angle can provoke behavioral changes. Happy is the wrong word but altered stimulus will potentially produce altered responses and light is a factor that is linked to seasonal triggers and altered behavior patterns. It is not something that is too pronounced in leos though, I suspect most owners wouldn't notice when the animal's activity period shifts by twenty minutes or notice breeding behaviors when the animals are housed individually.

I always thought that leos were crepuscular. I even asked my teacher in exotics management and he corrected me saying they were nocturnal. Also before I got her all the websites and books I found said nocturnal.. soo I just thought they must be correct.
haha, your probably right. I don't know much about their behaviour.. but I aim to learn about it when I go to university next year. The only behaviours I seem to notice right now are hunting behaviours.

anyway, thankyou for your advice

 

[M_surinamensis]

I always thought that leos were crepuscular. I even asked my teacher in exotics management and he corrected me saying they were nocturnal. Also before I got her all the websites and books I found said nocturnal.. soo I just thought they must be correct.

I strongly suspect that many of the authors of websites don't know the difference and that some of the authors of books simply ignore it for the sake of simplicity when dealing with a general public who would not see a distinction.

haha, your probably right. I don't know much about their behaviour.. but I aim to learn about it when I go to university next year. The only behaviours I seem to notice right now are hunting behaviours.

anyway, thankyou for your advice

It's not necessarily knowing the behavior as it would be lacking the capacity to recognize extremely subtle shifts in a species that has a very different set of behavioral triggers than we do. I am certain that you could identify them if you were to specifically look for them and take notes or record the behaviors over time so that they could be analyzed for differences... but with a single animal, in the kinds of variable conditions a pet is kept in (a lack of a control group), a lot of them would simply escape notice.

 

[Jordan]

I strongly suspect that many of the authors of websites don't know the difference and that some of the authors of books simply ignore it for the sake of simplicity when dealing with a general public who would not see a distinction.

Out of interest what is the difference?
because im one of the people that would probably just say they are nocturnal. soo.. teach me

 

[M_surinamensis]

Crepuscular is a term that indicates a period of high activity around dusk and dawn. Indirect light, coming it at an angle through the atmosphere, when the heat of the day is either waning (but remains) in the evening or building up with the first rays of sunlight being reflected in during a false dawn.

Nocturnal would be the time after the sun is completely gone and before it starts to come back.

In the wild, when reacting to natural conditions, leos are crepuscular. Most animals that get casually slapped with a "nocturnal" label are actually crepuscular. They're active at dusk, a bit towards dawn and rarely on exceptionally bright and relatively warm nights (during an actual nocturnal time frame). They're still terrestrial, with fossorial (underground) inclinations, so the fact that they are active during times of indirect sunlight still means that they are exceptionally efficient when it comes to D3 synthesis and UV requirements- but behaviorally, lighting makes some differences.

How much any owner would notice those differences is kind of up in the air. How important that period of low-light but not pitch dark activity actually is to the animal is somewhat debatable. Still, if someone wants to see their leos come out or wants to encourage more natural behavior patterns, they should gradually alter the light intensity and offer a period of low-light conditions for an hour or two in the evening and in the morning. A lot of pet animals probably get a bit of this anyway, without it being deliberate on the part of their owner, as the house they're kept in goes from open windows to electric lighting.

Just think about how many of them are probably given some soft, dim light from the warm glow of the computer monitor as their owner browses these forums in an otherwise dark room before going to bed every night.

 

[GothicGurrrl]

I really admire how much you know about leopard geckos
I wish I knew that much about them.. I've been reading a lot of books but they are all basically the same.. i want to find some that are a bit more complex than the ones sold in the pet stores near me. do you have any suggestions? and i'm interested to know what reptiles you own?