Enclosures, this doesn't make sense to me.

[endrien]

People say that some enclosures are too big, especially since I plan on getting a crested gecko people say that juveniles have difficulty finding food and the like in a big tank. What doesn't make sense to me is that the wild is millions of times larger than a tank and yet geckos live in the wild fine? What changes when they are put into an enclosure?

 

[Thorgecko707]

they are captive bred. unless you get one used to a huge area, they wont know what to do. most are kept in small containers.

 

[beezy]

my guess would be that they like to be snug and feel secure that's why people put them in not small but not huge enclosures..another guess is that in the wild even tho there isn't any "walls" to keep them enclosed, leopard geckos live under ground or in nooks and crannies in the desert and even tho the wild is HUGEMONGOUS they don't use all that space...they most likely stay in there hole or whatever and come out to feed and they go right back.

 

[M_surinamensis]

Edits in red.

It really comes down to microhabitat, behavioral needs and environmental control.

Microhabitat is a term that is used to indicate the extremely specific conditions and areas where an animal lives. Habitat is a region or country and broad terrain type... like "New Caledonia Microhabitat includes more detailed information like "areas of heavy vegetation which offer dense foliage and arboreal hides, patchy sun penetration and some areas of variable moisture underneath loose bark on the bole of a tree." It is specific temperatures, humidities and light intensities, it is detailed information about arboreal cover, hides, holes and basking areas; it is information about what an animal needs and what it avoids.

Microhabitat ties in to the behavioral needs because the animal in question is responding to instinctive dictates which pressure it to look for the ideal microhabitat. The exact second to second needs of the animal change, which is why they will move from a warm hide to a cool one, to a moist hide or out in the open- but those behaviors are all a result of instinctive dictates. Sometimes instincts can conflict with themselves or over-ride one another. The instincts are pressuring the animal to find someplace warm and humid, but the only options are warm and dry or cool and humid and one need will win out. One of the instincts that tends to be quite powerful, especially in small, arboreal, crepuscular geckos is the need to hide, it can overwhelm almost anything else.

Environmental control is something we are responsible for with captive animals. Supplying appropriately sized and placed hides, perches, a temperature gradient, the proper light intensity and so on. What we provide, the conditions we manufacture, dictate what kind of microhabitat is available for our animals and consequentially what kind of behaviors they display. If we build an environment incorrectly based on the conditions which are ideal for the animal, we can retard certain instincts and behaviors and harm the animal as a result.

Larger environments are not inherently bad... the animals have no problem finding water or food (that's just ridiculous to even suggest)- the problems of a larger environment are often something created by the person who is putting it together as they change the microhabitat. In the exact same way that people often have difficulty maintaining an ideal thermal gradient in a very small enclosure with the tools that are readily available to them, they frequently have problems doing the same in a large one. It is easy to fill a twenty gallon tank with hides and cover to make a crested gecko feel secure- but people often fail to have the same density of cover when they go to a bigger enclosure (feeling some obscure need to leave wide open spaces of nothing). The taller, longer environment gets away from them as they regard either end as an extreme and do not bother measuring conditions across the entire length at even intervals, the height provides a lot of open space which they rarely fill, they sometimes switch to brighter lights...

Essentially, it is not that big environments are bad, it is that they mandate some additional care that owners often seem to skip. Four hides in a twenty long is fine, four hides in a fifty five is not. Two thermometers in a twenty long is perfect, two thermometers in a fifty five is not. If the effort is made to replicate the ideal microhabitat, there's nothing at all wrong with a big enclosure. It just needs to be big and controlled.

A small note, just to add on to that, about space and security...

Appropriately sized and positioned hides make an animal feel secure, their instincts dictate that they remain near to a place where they can be safe from (most) predators. Part of it is the visual barrier, in or down or under or behind... and part of it involves the way that the space is just big enough for the animal and too small for most things that would eat them.

The various glass and plastic boxes we tend to keep them in are restrictive. They have X cubic feet of space from which they cannot escape. Reptiles aren't real... good... at understanding glass, but they are on some instinctual level aware of the fact that they're in a space that restricts them. The enclosure is usually too big to function as a hide, based on the total internal dimensions. Unless we then fill that space appropriately, the animals can be stressed out by conditions which amount to being trapped in a space that is too big to function as a hide and too small to allow for escape.

Big enclosures are perfectly fine, if some forethought goes into how the space is used in relation to the microhabitat that's ideal for the animal. A huge enclosure, filled with branches, leaves and arboreal hides* and the odd, smaller open area for some basking behaviors, with properly maintained levels of humidity and a thermal gradient that's manipulated both vertically and horizontally... crested geckos of any age and size will thrive.


*I like two pieces of cork bark, turned so that the curve of each forms a hollow between them () held together and securely suspended. Or if aesthetics are immaterial, dark plastic piping, cut in half lengthwise and put back together. Some people hang toilet paper rolls.

 

[endrien]

Wow thanks for that really informative post. So basically if done right a larger tank isn't too much of an issue?

 

[TokayKeeper]

Correct...

If you understand the species and the biology (= ecology, animal behavior, evolution [should you subscribe to that thought], etc) behind them, then you should be able to satisfy the requirements of a cage, big or small. From personal experience, large cages can be absolutely freak'n awesome. It provides the animal space, whether captive bred and ignorant to what space can be or wild caught and privy to what life once was; it provides enrichment for the animal; ultimately it allows, in my opinion, the animal to behave more naturally, more animated, and less robotic and pre-programmed to what we want....even though we still designed the larger cage.

 

[M_surinamensis]

From personal experience, large cages can be absolutely freak'n awesome. It provides the animal space, whether captive bred and ignorant to what space can be or wild caught and privy to what life once was; it provides enrichment for the animal; ultimately it allows, in my opinion, the animal to behave more naturally, more animated, and less robotic and pre-programmed to what we want....even though we still designed the larger cage.

I keep some boids that, being ambush predators, aren't really active. They get reasonably sized enclosures which exceed the minimum requirements for space, but not by a whole lot.

My lizards though... there aren't many that I keep these days, prehensile tailed skinks and black tree monitors... they have consistently used as much space as I have given them, no matter how much I increased it by. When they were in enclosures (not together) that were two feet by two feet by three feet, they used twelve cubic feet of space. When I moved them up to four by four by four cubes, they used all sixty four cubic feet. Now they're in six by eight by four displays and they continue to use all one hundred ninety two cubic feet.

I had to make adjustments to the heating, lighting and humidity as I moved them to larger enclosures. I continued to fill each enclosure with the appropriate kinds of space; things to climb on and hide in, properly proportioned open areas and arranging everything to best meet the behaviors of the species... but they move around and use as much as they are given. I encourage it, the way I present food especially, moving it to different places to encourage active foraging and hunting behaviors, but they move and hide, jump and dig, bask and sleep, run (well... the monitors run anyway) and climb more when they're given adequate space to do so. They weren't unhealthy in the smaller spaces, they displayed most of the same behaviors... but the complexity and frequency of activity went up as they were supplied with an enclosure which (through its construction and arrangement) provoked it.