Wondering if my Leo is special needs...

[INDRAJM]

Nix has been an eating machine since she ended her 3 week hunger strike. She eats everything I offer which includes crickets, meal worms, goliath worms, and Dubai Roaches.
here's the thing...she can't hunt!!
when it's cricket night I have to remove everything from her cage. I then have to keep shooing the cricket in her direction. She lumbers after it and most of the time misses. If the cricket stops moving she has no idea where it is. Even if it's sitting right in front of her.
with Dubai roaches they can crawl on her tail and she can't get it off. I have to assist her and help her catch her meals.
she has no idea how to eat out of a dish. I have to put her food on the floor . So, I'm wondering is she really smart or really dumb?
she sticks her head out of her log and I deliver her meals with tongs right in front of her.
she can see. When I took her to the vet during her hunger strike he said her vision was fine.
so, what do you guys think?

 

[acpart]

She either has you very well trained or she's not the sharpest tool in the shed. You could try putting her in a shoebox sized (6qt) tub with the crickets and a lid on in dim light and see how it goes. Or you could take out all the furniture (as you're doing) and use a piece of plexiglass to separate her into a very small area of her cage and see if she does any better. She may improve after a few feeding days of this.

Aliza

 

[rothsauce]

One of my girls had been acting similarly, and still does.

I have not tried anything like roaches or crickets yet, but with mealies and calciworms it takes her a moment to decide when to strike. She likes to stare at them an awful lot.
She has been better lately; not dragging mealies out of their bowl and actually bowl feeding herself (she wouldn't go near it for a long time, had to drop food infront of her) which I'd managed to witness last evening. But she too will ignore food if it isn't moving, unless she watches my other girl eat.

If she is a little special, and had been hunting her food for a long time, something new might be confusing her and take her a while to adjust.

 

[indyana]

I've noticed my gecko hunts better when he is hungry. Some of it I write off it laziness, but I assume that geckos, like other animals, need practice. If you don't give them the opportunity to practice or be hungry, they won't improve.

 

[Tongue Flicker]

Haha my boy is like that as well. He can hunt but gets tired after eating 1 cricket and would rather sleep than hunt again. He also doesn't eat superworms from the bowl, he likes them crawling around the bin

 

[INDRAJM]

I did dim the light. It seemed to help a little. I noticed she keeps looking up at my tongs. I think I'm confusing her as to where the food is coming from. Maybe I'm helping her a little too much?

she's a pig!! She wants to eat everyday. I let her eat every other day. Last night she ate 30 small mealworms and wanted more!! On crickets nights she'll eat 7 large crickets. She devours 2 goliath worms and looks for more. She has a nice fat tail. I hope I'm not feeding her too much?

 

[indyana]

LOL Yes, my gecko also used to stare up at the tongs when he couldn't find the bug right away. Have you tried herding the bugs around to keep them moving? Mine definitely loves movement, so if the insects freeze, he gets confused.

Sounds like a lot of food, but if she's hungry and not becoming obese, I don't see a problem with feeding her. If she's has constant access to food though, it will make her a bit lazier about hunting.

 

[INDRAJM]

I do keep the bugs moving for her. She gets confused real easy.
she doesn't have access to food all of the time. I feed her 1 mealworm at a time so I know how much she's eating.

I don't know how to tell if she's getting fat. She's always sticking her head out of her log to see if I'm going to offer her food or not. Last night I let her eat 6 Dubai roaches and she walked around her cage for about 30 minutes afterwards hoping to find some more!
haha, she's really making up for those 3 weeks she didn't eat!!

 

[Herbiebug]

One thing you can do with crickets to make feeding them a more straightforward affair is to disable one rear leg. Put crickets you intend to feed in to a small sandwich bag. Carefully single out crickets and break one of their long jumping legs at the knee (squeeze through the bag). You'll notice sometimes the crickets drop the leg entirely before you even apply pressure to it. This prevents them from jumping but otherwise does not impede their movement. Easier to hunt and most of them won't be able to escape the bowl before gecko eats them. The couple that do are the ones your gecko can then hunt down at leisure.

I do this mainly to ensure that my leo is eating the majority of his crickets right when i put them in the tank. He's pretty skilled at hunting but he'll get lazy half way through the lot if I leave all crickets 100% intact. Then have to worry about them drowning themselves in the water dish and messing with gecko while he's sleeping.