Why does he act like this?

[lisa127]

I have a juvenile male leopard gecko right now. He's the first gecko I've had since rehoming a small colony I had many years ago. He is different though. Now, back then I only had 2 males the whole time I was keeping leo's. The rest were all female. Anyway, my current leo Bert is more outgoing and friendly than any leo's I had years ago. He loves to come out of his enclosure and he will beg me for attention. If he is in the mood to come out and I go to do something in his enclosure he begins to crawl on my hand and up my arm. However, every once in a while (twice in the past six weeks) he gets ultra spooked about something. I have no idea what it is or why. But he will get spooked and run across his cage in a frantic way. Then he will spend the next couple of days staying on the cool side of his enclosure and moving real slow and doing the slow tail wag anytime you walk into the reptile room. He also won't eat during these couple of days. No leo I've ever had have had these spooked episodes. He is the first one. Does anyone else have a leo that acts like this? Again, when he is not spooked he is very friendly and outgoing.

I wanted to add that the last time he did this, even after he recovered I kept seeing him waving his tail at his reflection every now and then. I had dark blue construction paper taped to the outside of the glass then, and I took it down when I saw this. Things improved, but I'm wondering if seeing his reflection is what happened again even though there is no construction paper now. I don't know, it's possible I guess......

 

[sausage]

All leos have different personalties it could be that you just have a really nice one lol but In my experience the appearance of wanting attention and being egar to come out of the viv is because they dont like being in there, or there is something in there frighting them. I had a female that would "beg to come out" and i thought it was cute until i realised her cage mate (another female) was bullying her and she just wanted to escap her.
It could very well be that he is being scared by his own reflection, perhaps he feels threatened by the prospects of seeing another male or another gecko in general. I dont think geckos are self aware lol
if you have a glass tank it can still reflect to some degree even without the paper on the out side.
try putting the paper on the inside and see if that helps.
Also is all the stuff in his viv new or is it from the ones you used to keep a while back? as there could still be smells of other geckos on the items.

 

[lisa127]

You know, my husband suggested putting the paper on the inside and I think I may try that. No, I have nothing from my leo's back then. That was many years ago. But I think I may try the paper on the inside. I'll just buy a thing of construction paper or something and just put new paper up as needed. It's not like it's expensive. I find it interesting that none of my females were ever bothered by their reflections but the male I have now is.

On the plus side, when this most recent spooked episode happened two days ago it only lasted about 3 hours instead of 2 days like the last time.

 

[sausage]

keep me posted on whether it helped.

I think its just a male thing, males seem to be much more threatened by the sight of other geckos. i can only assume that its a reaction to the prospect of possible confrontation.
Females can be kept together under the right conditions so im guessing that they would be less bothered by seeing another gecko unless it treated them.
Would be interesting to research.

 

[lisa127]

Well, I applied construction paper to the inside of his tank instead of the outside. I put it on the back and on the two sides and left the front clear. So far it seems great. He seems to be content. Only time will tell if we have another spastic episode but it does look like he is more calm in general.