Kidsplanation: Tails, Scales, and Tiny Paws - Pocket Pet and Reptile Talk
"Kidsplanation" invites you to a lively discussion about pocket pets and reptiles, featuring Oren's curious questions and Dr. Sugerman's informative answers. Learn fascinating facts about the lifespans, diets, and unique characteristics of these various furry and scaly friends. The hosts also share heartwarming stories from their own experiences and offer tips for thoughtful pet care during the Christmas season, making this episode an engaging and educational journey for young animal enthusiasts.
What You’ll Learn:
Discover the Lifespan Secrets:
Uncover the lifespan mysteries of guinea pigs, hamsters, and reptiles like chameleons and leopard geckos.
Gain insights into the factors that contribute to the varying lifespans of these unique pets.
Insights into Pocket Pet Personalities:
Explore the endearing behaviors of pocket pets, from the social dynamics of guinea pigs to the active and exploratory nature of hamsters.
Learn about the quirky habits of gerbils and the adaptable personalities of bearded dragons.
Feeding Facts and Tips:
Understand the dietary needs of different pocket pets, including the diverse diets of guinea pigs, hamsters, and reptiles.
Get tips on providing a balanced and nutritious diet to keep your pets healthy and happy.
Creating Enriching Environments:
Learn the importance of creating stimulating environments for pocket pets, such as mazes and climbing structures.
Gain insights into the specific habitat requirements of reptiles, ensuring they thrive in captivity.
Christmas Surprises for Your Pets:
Discover creative and thoughtful ideas for making the holiday season special for your pocket pets and reptiles.
Explore unique Christmas treats and enrichment activities to keep your furry and scaly friends entertained.
Expert Tips on Pet Care:
Dr. Sugerman shares expert advice on caring for pocket pets and reptiles, offering valuable tips for responsible pet ownership.
Learn about the specialized needs of these animals and how to provide the best care possible.
Ideas Worth Sharing:
"I think pocket pets would really like a maze. You know, something where they have to work a little for their treats. And, have fun in the maze!" - Oren Sugerman-McGiffin
"It's always good to know where the specialists are, which emergency hospitals will see exotics. Have that prepared beforehand, so you're not scrambling at the last minute to try to find somebody." - Dr. Tyler Sugerman-McGiffin
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Read The Transcript:
Dr. Sugerman: [00:00:00] Hey everybody, welcome back to Kidsplanation today. So for those of you who don't know on Vetsplanation, I will sometimes have my 11, now 11 year old son on, Oren. And he'll usually ask me some sort of question. I have not prepared any answers for this. I just have a general idea of what he's going to ask me.
Otherwise, a lot of this is just him asking me questions about animals, veterinary medicine in general, and we just talk about that. So... would you like to introduce yourself though Oren?
Oren: Hi.
Dr. Sugerman: Alright, so I heard you have questions today, like a follow up to the last time, right? We talked about dogs and cats and how to best take care of them.
And now you wanted to ask about what?
Oren: Gerbils, hamsters, guinea pigs, those things.
Dr. Sugerman: Alright, so we refer to them as like pocket pets or like small companion animals.
Oren: Yeah, we want to talk about the pocket pets.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. So let's see. It's actually a great question, especially around this time of the year, because a lot of people will end up getting like little hamsters for people, or [00:01:00] for kids for Christmas.
One of the first things, is these animals do usually live inside. So you want to have a nice big cage for them. With hamsters they really like to burrow into things, like they like a lot of bedding in there, so that way they can burrow into little holes, especially with it being cold, which is a great, great thing to talk about.
With hamsters, they also usually like to have some sort of hiding place. There's lots of different types of hamsters. So I really like the Russian Dwarf Hamsters. Those are my favorite. But there's lots of different types of hamsters. And the big thing is making sure that they have like adequate food.
So food and water are really important for them. They have to have not just a lot of fruits and vegetables. People tend to give them a lot of fruits because they love fruits. But it does actually give them diarrhea. Which can make them super sick. So we don't really want to do that. We actually want to give them their prepared diet.
So usually you go to the store and you can find a hamster diet. And you want to make sure it's specific for the hamsters.
Oren: Yeah, is there... Is it [00:02:00] okay to get them like every like once in a while after like maybe six months apart, maybe a year apart? I don't know. Every once in a while you could get them like maybe a little bit of fruit.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, absolutely. Like even if you want to do it like once a week, that'd be okay. Just a small amount.
Oren: Just like how we give, just like how we give our leopard gecko, Dottie, a wax worm every so often.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, exactly.
Oren: We could give, if we had a hamster, we could just fruit every once in a while.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Oren: Not too much.
Dr. Sugerman: Exactly. Yeah, we want to make sure they have real food and that they also have, they can have treats for sure, but just needs to be like treats, not an everyday thing, or if you do do it every day, very small amounts of it. And then the other really important thing for them is they also do need to have like hay to be able to chew on.
There's lots of different things that we have to talk about around that, but usually, you do have to worry about like, when they're growing, I believe it's alfalfa hay that you want to give them because it has a lot of calcium in it. But once they're an adult, you actually want to switch that to something like a [00:03:00] timothy hay or just not alfalfa hay because they'll actually get stones that form from it because there's too much calcium.
They'll get bladder stones from it. When they're an adult, you gotta change a lot of those things as far as what you're feeding them.
Oren: So we talked about the guinea pigs and the hamsters.
Dr. Sugerman: So that's hamsters. So guinea pigs I do actually really like guinea pigs. I used to, I don't know if you remember, I used to rescue guinea pigs when you were little.
And mom told me I needed to stop doing that.
Oren: But you're not stopping that.
Dr. Sugerman: I did have to because I'm allergic to the hay, so I can't really have a lot of them there. But I did. I used to rescue the guinea pigs, and then I sent them over to your school, actually, when you were little to be school pets.
But guinea pigs are really interesting because they have to have vitamin C, like extra vitamin C, which people don't really think about because that's usually oh, it should be in their diet, but you do have to give them extra vitamin C. Which usually I believe the most efficient way is to put it into their water. But you also got to change that water every [00:04:00] day to make sure they've gotten an adequate enough amount of vitamin C.
Oren: There can't be too much or bladder stones.
There can't be too little or worse. Is it?
Dr. Sugerman: That's calcium. Calcium and vitamin C are two different things. Yeah. Yeah, but it seems it seems very similar, right? But they're actually two different things. And then the other big thing for our guinea pigs is the most common reason why I ended up having to rescue them was because they ended up getting something called bumblefoot. So a bumblefoot is like at the bottom of the pads of their foot. They walk on those and they have a lot of weight on those, right?
So if their cage isn't cleaned all the time, they get this bumblefoot. And it like makes these ulcers or these scars inside their feet and it's really painful for them. If their feet swell up, there's a bacteria that gets in there and it's really hard to fix. So a lot of times they have to do like when I got them I would have to do bandaging on them every single day to get them to the point to where their feet were okay.
And then changing their their bedding out like literally every day, every other day while they have that. [00:05:00] When they don't have that like you can change it every three to five days is probably fine. I even had to do it where it was like a week if it was a really large cage, but if you have a smaller cage, like you really got to do it pretty often.
Otherwise, they pee everywhere. They poop everywhere. Remember how like we went in the snows this last week and there was a lot of deer poop, deer poop everywhere. So do hamsters, so do guinea pigs. So do gerbils. They poop everywhere.
Oren: And then for gerbils.
Dr. Sugerman: Same things. They are very similar to a guinea pig.
It's pretty much everything that you would do the same. But, they do need, like I said, adequate enough space. Hamsters, you can get a hamster ball. Like the little ball. So they can roll around it.
Oren: So they can go out places.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, they can exercise. They can run. They can explore.
Oren: As long as you don't have a cat that really wants to eat that tiny little furry morsel running around inside that plastic ball. They want to get through that plastic ball. And I don't think a hamster would do very well getting thrown around.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, they are, they're prey, they're a prey [00:06:00] animal. So like a lot of other animals eat them, right? They are not an animal that goes to eat other animals.
So they get really scared when they like smell a cat around. Or if they have a cat that's trying to bat them around. That's really, really scary for them. Can you imagine if you had a giant that just picked you up on a ball and started shaking you or just rolled you around, right?
Oren: I would flip out.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, so it's really important for kids as well to know not to roll those things around because it's very scary for them and you could actually really injure them because they may flip and then land on their head or land on their back.
Oren: They are tiny. They're not. They're, they're not built for getting thrown around.
Dr. Sugerman: Exactly. Yeah, and I've definitely had hamsters and guinea pigs that have broken their leg because somebody was like, playing with the ball and they, they broke their leg from that. Or a toe, things like that.
Oren: Toddler?
Dr. Sugerman: It was a toddler, yep. It happens, like they just, it's just really important for people to watch though to make sure that nobody's able to do that.
No dogs can get to them, no cats can get to them, nobody can shake them [00:07:00] around, things like that. Yeah, and then also just enrichment things. It's also like important for like your dog and cat, right? Your cat has toys, your dog has toys. Your hamster and guinea pig should have toys as well.
Oren: If you have a cat or cats and and a guinea pig that you're thinking about putting in a little plastic ball, then maybe put the cat in the other room.
Dr. Sugerman: I don't know if there's, they might make balls big enough for the guinea pigs, but...
Oren: I doubt. I doubt that. That's gonna take up a lot of space.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, it takes up a lot of space.
Oren: And they're still gonna get thrown around.
Dr. Sugerman: So well, they also have big tubes that they can go to. It's like some people will have two different enclosures and they just have tubes that connect to them. So that way they have like they can go back and forth. And that's a really great way for to do enrichment too because you can put like certain foods in one area and you can put certain foods in another one. Or you could put treats in one and treats different treats in another one. They also really, like I said, they like to burrow things. So like hiding treats is good too because it just gives them some mental stimulation.
Oren: If I have a [00:08:00] hamster in my house, I'm gonna deck out the walls with tubes
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, that'd be really cool.
Oren: There's gonna be a lot.
Dr. Sugerman: Just do like tubes everywhere all over your house.
Oren: There's just a tube like just going like two enclosures. This is for the hamster wheel. This one is for the hamster wheel. This one is for food. And more hamsters. I don't know, if they can go inside of the hamster ball.
Dr. Sugerman: Just certain things to try to help them stimulate their mind.
Oren: It's good to have dreams.
Dr. Sugerman: People tend to want to only just, they get the hamster and they're like, okay, just have to feed it and clean it every once in a while. But that's...
Oren: Make sure the cat doesn't eat it.
Dr. Sugerman: But it's more important than just that. It definitely takes a lot more of... it takes a lot more, like you definitely want to be like holding them every day so that they get used to you, they get used to your smells. You want to interact with them. You want to provide mental stimulation for them. All those really nice things.
Did you have other questions about it?
Oren: I was thinking, wait, is this like the same with, [00:09:00] between all three for the guinea pigs, hamster, gerbil?
Dr. Sugerman: Yep, for all of them.
Oren: If there are two males or two males, female, male/female, do basically the same things happen?
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. So males tend to be territorial, so it can be hard to have two males in the same cage versus two females.
Most of the time they do okay. But sometimes they don't do very well. It's, it's like a trial and error. A lot of times they say usually two females are better, or a male and a female, but the only thing is if you have a male and a female, you might end up having guinea pig babies or hamster babies.
Oren: I think dad would like guinea pig babies.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, they are pretty cute. But, but if you have a lot of them, then now you have to figure out what to do with all these guinea pigs.
Oren: What am I going to do with these puffballs?
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, so a lot of people will just get one. Rather than getting multiple of them, because you just don't always know if they're going to get along or not.
Sometimes you can get two from the from the same litter, like two females from the same litter, and then you have a [00:10:00] better chance of them liking each other.
Oren: Two males, one female. No, two males.
Dr. Sugerman: Two males, they'll fight.
Oren: They will fight for the female.
Dr. Sugerman: Yes.
Oren: And then two females, one male. A lot of hamster babies?
Dr. Sugerman: Probably a lot of hamster babies.
You know how I talk about how cats and dogs need to have a c section? So they need help giving birth, right? So guinea pigs and hamsters can have the same exact thing.
I've definitely had to do a c section on a guinea pig before. The hamsters are the ones, the really small ones. I've not had to do a c section on a hamster, but they definitely can have problems giving birth.
It's like you have to think about those things ahead of time. It might be cute to have all these hamster babies and guinea pig babies.
Oren: But what are you going to do with them when they get big?
Dr. Sugerman: What are you going to do with them? Are you going to find a home for them?
Oren: If they're guinea pig babies, you're going to have a lot of... You're going to have a lot of money spent and...
Dr. Sugerman: You need a lot of space, right?
Or you need to find somebody else who wants guinea pigs, and, I don't remember how many babies they [00:11:00] have off the top of my head, unfortunately, but...
Oren: A lot.
Dr. Sugerman: My guess is gonna be like six-ish, but I'm not 100%, I can't remember.
Oren: That's still a lot for them.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, but, but just think about the fact that if you have six guinea pig babies, now you have to find six homes.
Or three homes or whatever. You still need to find multiple homes for them. Just like when you have cats who have kittens. Same thing, you gotta find multiple homes for them.
Oren: Unless you find a crazy person who likes collecting guinea pigs and has enough space in their house.
Dr. Sugerman: That's not a crazy person. If they can provide that space for the guinea pigs and they're able to give them love and enrichment and play with them each day, then that's fine. You can have multiple guinea pigs. You just need to have a lot of that space.
Oren: And you need to have enough food and everything.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, you gotta have enough food, you gotta be able to take care of them.
Oren: If you can sustain them, and and everyone is fine with this, and it's working out, then yes.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, like your goal is to have five cats, right? Or 50 cats, who knows?
Oren: Yeah.
Dr. Sugerman: But if, as long as you can provide for them.
You can afford veterinary [00:12:00] care for them, you can have enough space for them, you can have enough litter boxes for them. It's the same thing with guinea pigs and hamsters.
Oren: Probably like four or five. I think that's enough because 50 is just...
Dr. Sugerman: That's a lot. That's a lot. Yeah.
Oren: If that's, that's like
51 litter boxes.
Dr. Sugerman: Yes, that's a lot of litter boxes, right?
The other thing we have to talk about too is like their teeth.
So like they will overgrow their teeth unless they have things to chew on. So they definitely need like toys, objects, things like that. Like things that are specifically meant for chewing, so that they can chew on that to be able to grind their teeth down as well.
Oren: So they basically need chew toys.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, like a chew toy. Yep.
Oren: Except they're not as soft.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, they're not soft like what we think about for dogs and cats. Or dogs having chew toys. Some dogs have really firm chew toys, like you have the ...
Oren: Kongs.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, Kongs, things like that, that are really firm, right? But this is something that just kind of like helps to grind their teeth down a little bit better.
Oren: Block of wood.
Dr. Sugerman: A lot of them are like blocks of wood.
Oren: Blocks of wood that are small enough to fit [00:13:00] in there and are firm enough.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, also like the hay helps grind them down, their feed helps grind them down, like those things help as well, but having something for them to chew on too will definitely help.
Any other questions about that?
Oren: How long can they, they live if they are, like how, like their average and how far they can actually go if they're cared for well.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, I don't have that exact data off the top of my head, but I believe with guinea pigs, it is about five ish years if I remember correctly.
Oren: And if they're treated well.
Dr. Sugerman: If they're treated well. For hamsters, it's a lot shorter. So it's usually like a year and a half to three years, I believe.
Oren: Three years is basically you, you've met their needs perfectly.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. There's a lot of other things like they can get to like when they get older. Like females tend to get a lot of cancer, unfortunately.
So they'll usually get masses in their abdomen or masses on their outside. And a lot of times they'll have to be put to sleep for those reasons, [00:14:00] but that's the same thing with dogs and cats. They tend to have cancer when they're older as well.
Oren: This happens in basically everything.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, unfortunately.
Oren: I see. And then gerbils.
Dr. Sugerman: I believe that they're the same. About five ish years.
Any other questions?
Oren: Yeah, I think that's it.
Dr. Sugerman: Okay, did you want to talk about reptiles now?
Oren: Leopard geckos and other lizards.
Dr. Sugerman: So you want to talk about like housing for the lizards?
Oren: And, like what to do with them, how to treat them, and interactions.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. There's, they're a little more complicated than having a pocket pet, so...
Oren: They're not a pocket pet.
Dr. Sugerman: They're, they're, they're just, they need more things.
I always think that a leopard gecko can be a really easy lizard to have. We have, we have a leopard gecko. People do need to know that they do live a long time. So they can live like 15 years. But[00:15:00] they're pretty easy to take care of. Mostly they just want They need water. They need a source of water.
Typically it's easier to spray them down. Or that, they make these really nice things that you can put on top of their, their cage. It just rains down and they really like those things.
Oren: So like basically like a, ceiling humidifier.
Dr. Sugerman: Like that, yeah, it rains down on them. And if you have it hot enough, it makes it humid enough in that, in that enclosure for them.
Cause they like to lick water off of like walls or rocks, plants, things like that.
Oren: So that's why you spray off like the, the fake wall.
Dr. Sugerman: Yep, so I spray her fake wall so she can lick off of that.
Oren: And somewhere for them to be under the fake rocks, the little coconut.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, exactly. They need humid hidey spaces for the leopard geckos.
So they need like I have a coconut that sits right up like by the heat. So that way it makes it nice and humid in there. Like I spray it down inside the coconut that has moss in it or making a humid hole. Like she has four or five different places that are humid. Half of the tank is going to be pretty [00:16:00] hot, with a really hot, hot spot, and each, each reptile is different for like, how much they need, and how much heat they need, and how much humidity they need.
So you gotta look it up and know exactly how much. But, she has half the tank that's really hot, and half the tank is cooler. Not cold, but cooler. So that way there will, the middle will then be warm. So she can regulate where she wants to go for, because they're not quite like us. We have, we are warm blooded, right?
So we can actually...
Oren: She's cold blooded.
Dr. Sugerman: So warm blooded animals can keep their warmth, their body temperature, the same all the time.
Oren: We can go anywhere. We can go anywhere hot and cold. As long as we have enough clothing for the cold and, and less clothing for the heat.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. So reptiles, they're cold blooded, so they have to be able to use the environment around them to keep them warm.
So in order to warm up, they have to go to a rock or something that's really warm.
Oren: And they [00:17:00] sun themselves.
Dr. Sugerman: They sun themselves and then they'll go back into under rocks and hiding places and stuff.
Oren: And that'll cool them down a little bit.
Dr. Sugerman: To cool them down.
Oren: They can't, they can't get too hot, or they, and they can't get too cold.
So they need to make... schedule like regular intervals.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. And if they are in a really cold place let's say during the winter. They'll do something called brumation. B R U M A T I O N. Brumation. It's like hibernation. Except for it just means that they're bringing their body temperature down.
They are making it to where they don't need to eat very often. They're mostly just resting.
Oren: So it's basically hibernation. It's like the reptile version of hibernation.
Dr. Sugerman: Exactly. Yeah. They're not quite sleeping all the time.
Oren: Except they have more control over it.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, that's how they can keep themselves... They won't stay warm during that period of time, they'll stay colder, but it's a way for them to be able to survive through that cold.
Oren: And they don't need to eat a lot.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, they don't have to eat a lot from it. [00:18:00] Yep, exactly.
Oren: They just...
I don't know. They, if, if they're skinny then they need to eat a little more maybe.
Dr. Sugerman: They usually eat a lot right before brumation and then they don't eat anything during brumation. So like I said they have a hidey place, they have a humid place, they have a hot place, they have a cooler place.
And then just depending on which reptile you have, depends on what kind of diet they need. So Leopard Geckos, they usually eat just insects so they'll eat crickets, or what do we have for our Leopard Gecko? It's called a mealworm.
Oren: Basically, baby flies.
Dr. Sugerman: Mealworms are not baby flies. No, they're baby beetles.
Oren: They'll go from, I don't know, larvae to worm to, wait, they'll go from larvae to worm to larvae to beetle.
Dr. Sugerman: Pupa.
Oren: So they go from larva to
Dr. Sugerman: Larvae,
Oren: from larvae to
Dr. Sugerman: to worm
Oren: to a mealworm. And you can tell
Dr. Sugerman: Worm to pupa,
Oren: Mealworm to pupa, and then pupa to beetle.
Dr. Sugerman: [00:19:00] Yep.
Oren: And then the beetles just do crazy stuff.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. Yeah.
Oren: Wasn't there like a premature phase sometimes?
Dr. Sugerman: It's not really a premature thing.
Oren: Like for beetles, there's, they sometimes do look weird.
Dr. Sugerman: They do look weird. I will actually tell people, anybody who's planning on getting reptiles or an animal that needs to eat some sort of mealworms. There's this really cool thing that I found, and I'll put a link to it and our show notes.
But it's this, it's this bug factory essentially as to where you can separate out your worms and your pupa and the larva and it makes it really easy to be able to farm the worms or basically make your own worms instead of having to buy them every week. It's been made really simple.
I used to have it to where I'd put them just in a cricket container and it just didn't really work very well because the beetles would try to eat the larva instead of the food that I was feeding them. So this works great. And it's like I said, I'll put a link to that in the show notes. But also as we talked about like leopard geckos, they're more, they're out during the night, usually, [00:20:00] not usually, during the day. Ours is a little bit different.
Oren: You just need to feed them during sunset when it gets to that point.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, yeah. So they're actually known as what's called corpuscular, meaning they come out at sunset and at sunrise, mostly.
Oren: Okay, so they're basically, so they're a little more than nocturnal?
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, they're not quite nocturnal, they're more corpuscular.
Oren: Also forgot you gotta make sure the mealworms don't eat the leopard gecko. It works both ways the leopard gecko eats the mealworm, but if the mealworm is given the opportunity, it will definitely eat the leopard gecko.
Dr. Sugerman: Absolutely.
Oren: It will go over there and devour them.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, so I'll usually put the mealworm in with her, and if she doesn't eat it after about five minutes or so, I take all of them out.
Oren: Yeah, we have a little, kind of like a
Dr. Sugerman: A little bowl. They even make bowls where like the mealworms can't escape. They have like a ridge or lip on top so that the mealworms can't get out.? So those are great as well. So we try to keep all of them in there to make sure that if she doesn't eat them, we can take them out.
Oren: It's satisfying to watch her eat [00:21:00] them.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Oren: She's just going around, she sees a worm, and she will eat that thing in like a second.
Dr. Sugerman: Yep.
Oren: Really fast.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. So they like doing those kind of things.
Oren: And then every once in a while a waxworm.
Dr. Sugerman: Yep, you can feed them waxworms. I try not to feed them a lot of those. Because we don't want them to be very fatty.
Oren: Just when, just when it's time for them to hibernate.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, I do like to try to feed her more of them when she brumates. She has decided those last two years not to brumate.
That's fine. That's up to her. I can't force her to brumate.
Oren: It's her choice.
Dr. Sugerman: Yep. She's just too warm and comfortable, and that's fine.
Oren: And she likes winter, apparently.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, but she'll definitely eat less during the winter, then. Yeah, and then like I said leopard geckos, chameleons. Chameleons are great, except for they are a lot of hard work.
I loved my chameleon, but they are definitely a lot of hard work.
Oren: They are worth it to have.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, so leopard geckos usually need... they're not climbers usually. They'll climb little things, but they mostly need lots of space going like [00:22:00] horizontally, versus chameleons, they like to climb. They need more space going up.
Oren: Yeah, I remember when we were in the condo, the enclosure was like I don't know, from the edge of this desk to like right here.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, it's pretty thin and very tall. That's usually what they need.
Oren: They need branches.
Dr. Sugerman: They need lots of branches. They like to hide.
Oren: You need to somehow position those branches so they can just keep going up and it's not basically a nest at the bottom.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, and they also need a lot of that rainfall as well.
Oren: So they need the ceiling humidifier.
Dr. Sugerman: Yep, so I had a humidifier in there to keep it really humid. So I push steam in there essentially. And then I also had rain coming from the top. So I had lots of things hooked up to this thing.
Like it took a lot to be able to keep them, to keep that, that chameleon very sustained the way it needed to be. So I had like humidifier going in, I had a rain thing on top. Plus the other thing I forgot to mention too is lights. Lights are very important. We have a heat lamp that [00:23:00] heats up the area, but you also have a UVB lamp.
So the UVB allows for them to have good vitamin penetration because they need that. They're not outside, right? We're inside a house. They don't see the Sun.
Oren: They need vitamin C so their skin doesn't get all messed up.
Dr. Sugerman: They need vitamin D, is the thing.
Oren: Vitamin D for skin.
Dr. Sugerman: Yep, vitamin D for skin.
It also helps with like their bone structure. They can get really bad diseases if they don't have the right amount of vitamin d.
Oren: And for vitamin C, they can get the stone.
Dr. Sugerman: They don't usually get stones as much. That's more if you give them too much vitamins. So a lot of times you need to mix, that's a really good point, you actually mix a lot of their, their worms and stuff with a vitamin powder.
So that way you can give them adequate enough amounts of vitamins. I try to tend to do that more with the worms. So I try to give them a variety of things that have a lot of vegetables in it so that way it has a lot of vitamins in it and so it's less likely for her to get up to have a problem. [00:24:00] But just even rolling the worms in the vitamin mixture can help with that. Just sometimes people tend to douse them and then they'll get all too much vitamins.
Oren: Okay, so so when you do the on the right amount of powder on the worm to them they see the worm as a food tray seasoned with their favorite seasoning on top.
Dr. Sugerman: Some, some of them don't mind the the powder on top, but some of them do not like it. Like Dottie, our Leopard Gecko, will not eat them if there is powder on it. So that's why it's really important for me that I have to feed the worms appropriately to make sure that she gets the right nutrition.
Oren: That makes sense. Why? Why you only give her the plain worms?
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. Yeah. 'cause she won't, she'll not touch them. It does not matter. If she, she will go weeks without eating. Because if she even at all smells the powder on there,
Oren: She will not accept your food.
Dr. Sugerman: She will not accept it. Yep. And that's fine.
Like I said, that just makes a little bit more work for me and that's okay.
Oren: She is picky.
Dr. Sugerman: Yes. [00:25:00] But then also, same thing I said with, with, chameleons, you got to make sure that they're the right humidity, the right temperature. They do require a lot more work. I do personally really like lizards and reptiles but they are a lot more work.
And when they get sick, it tends to take a while before you notice that they're really sick because they're, again, a prey animal. They are used to other animals eating them, so they don't show their illnesses.
Oren: They don't, they don't want to show it. They don't want to show that they are vulnerable because if there is a predator watching them, they don't want the predator to think that they are, that they're weak and they can't really do anything to protect themselves.
It's also sucking it up and. They're just sucking up and saying, I'm perfectly fine.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. And most, and so chameleons mostly do insects as well. They mostly eat insects as well. You have other types of lizards, like a bearded dragon. That's one of mom's favorites.
Oren: Wait, doesn't Heidi have one?
Dr. Sugerman: Heidi has one. Yep, exactly. Hi Heidi!
She has one as well. And they are a little bit more [00:26:00] versatile in what they eat. They eat a lot of leafy vegetables. They really like vegetables. You should give them fruit, but small amounts of fruit.
Oren: They are a salad person?
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, they're omnivores, so they're not insectivores like some other lizards, like Dottie, they are omnivores, so they eat both insects and they also eat fruits and vegetables as well.
Like I said, you just don't want to do a lot of fruits, again, because it'll give them diarrhea, because they just, they just don't have the correct bacteria to break all of it down. They do also like having, so if you're like, oh, I forgot to go get worms, or the worms aren't ready yet, you can give them vegetables for a day or two, and then go back to giving them worms.
But they, they eat a variety of things and they are usually they have the same things like they still need a light. They still need a UVB light. They still need to have heat lamp. They need to have various temperatures and very specific humidities. So I always tell people if they're going to get a lizard, they should really look into it first because you need to know what kind of setup...
Oren: You need to be prepared.
You need to [00:27:00] know how much work it is going to be and maybe set up the cage.
Dr. Sugerman: And they're a lot bigger. Their tanks need a lot need to be be a lot bigger because they're a lot bigger of a lizard. You can have things like iguanas, which are, they also are omnivores. They also eat insects and they eat fruits and vegetables, but they are huge.
That's why they need really big tanks. It's you really have to think about what kind of lizards are going to be getting first. And also lifespan as well, so like bearded dragons live for longer, but your chameleons live for shorter, they usually live around three to five ish years.
Oren: But compared to other pets that like the guinea pigs and stuff, that's pretty big.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, and I mean.
Oren: Don't reptiles normally have like longer lifespans?
Dr. Sugerman: No, like the chameleon, like I said, they only live for about 3-5 years ish.
Oren: Besides the chameleon.
Dr. Sugerman: Some of your bigger ones, like the bearded dragons, they live for longer. Like Dotty, like I said, should have about 15 years.
Oren: I don't think anything's gonna happen anytime soon. She's perfectly fine.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, she's doing good. But you just never know, like sometimes, unfortunately, you just [00:28:00] find them and they're no longer alive because you'll never know why. They just, they just unfortunately pass away sometimes.
Oren: It just happens.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Oren: We can't stop that.
Dr. Sugerman: Yep, yep.
Oren: And then the longest lifespan for all the reptiles.
Dr. Sugerman: Oh gosh, I couldn't even tell you. I don't know which one.
Oren: Maybe the iguanas.
Dr. Sugerman: Iguanas live pretty long...
Oren: 25 years.
Dr. Sugerman: Roughly about that. Probably, maybe even longer. I'm not sure. I've only had an iguana once and that was when I was younger.
So I haven't looked into them as much. But I also don't have as many that come in to the ER because usually I tell people like, if you're gonna get a reptile, like you should know where your nearest exotic specialist is because they are the people who are gonna be able to do the most for you. They know the most, like you,
Oren: They are specialists.
Dr. Sugerman: They're specialists. Like when you have people who are doing horses and dogs and cats and cows and stuff, like they can know a wide variety of things. But if you have somebody who specializes in dogs and [00:29:00] cats. Like I can tell you a lot more diseases, a lot more drugs and stuff for them. Somebody who specializes in more like farm animals.
Yeah, I am not as good about I don't know as much about like horses versus, I'm talking about dogs and cats but same thing with pocket pets and with your reptiles. It's really good to go to somebody who's more specialized in them because they...
Oren: A regular veterinarian is going to know a, and I'm like, to an extent, it's like a jack of all trades.
We have, they know the wide variety of animals and know a. I don't know, a, an...
Dr. Sugerman: I know some things about pocket pets and reptiles, like I can treat some diseases, but they're really hard to be able to do diagnostics on. So to do blood work on or to do x-rays on. And so I usually tell people like, if you, if you really want to do everything you can for that pet that I highly suggest going to see somebody who is an exotic specialist, somebody who specializes [00:30:00] in that, so that way they know.
Oren: If they're a specialist.
They know basically everything.
Dr. Sugerman: They have all the tools for it.
Oren: A really, really, really big amount, just about that one animal. They could specialize on horses, but then when it comes to a dog, they're not as...
Dr. Sugerman: They're not as special. They could probably see a dog, but they're just not as specialized in that, right?
If they normally see horses.
Oren: And then there are veterinarians that aren't really special, that aren't specialized in animals. They're able to work with, they're able to work with a wider range, though.
Dr. Sugerman: Yes and no. You definitely have places that are just called mixed practices to where they do a lot of everything.
And I don't know how specialized they really are in anything if they didn't know a lot of things they just know a lot of things about a lot of things. I don't know I've never worked at one of those one of those clinics so I can't really say typically like I said I usually say if you do have those kind of pets I do usually recommend going to see a specialist. There are definitely some veterinarians out there like we have Dr. [00:31:00] Smith, who's really good at birds. We have another doctor, Dr. Millard or Dr. K, who are really good at doing pocket pets and reptiles. But they're not going to know, like, all of those really intricate type things, and so sometimes they have to go to somebody else for those things.
Like I said, it's always good to know, like, where the specialists are, which emergency hospitals will see exotics have that prepared beforehand, so you're not scrambling at the last minute to try to find somebody.
Oren: Okay.
And then, tomorrow is Christmas. What are we going to know what to do with animals during Christmas, other than don't let them eat Santa?
Dr. Sugerman: So this podcast is going to come out after Christmas, a lot after Christmas. A couple weeks after Christmas, because we have two episodes ahead of it, I think.
Oren: Okay.
Dr. Sugerman: Your question is what to do with them for Christmas. The big thing is What to get them?
Oren: You know, just a random thing.
Dr. Sugerman: I'd say to get them some enrichment things. To getting them something to chew on for our pocket pets, or to get[00:32:00] a new log, something new for your reptiles.
Oren: Get them get them a little. Like the, maybe a little mini oasis like we got, Dottie?
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, so like I got her, last year we got her a coconut, and we got her a new...
Oren: A coconut, and like a skull.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, a new skull rock for her to go onto.
Oren: We got her a lot of stuff.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, yeah, so we kind of like redid her cage last year. It was just like more of a desert scene, so I made it a little less deserty.
Oren: Yeah, we added air plants.
Dr. Sugerman: Yep, air plants. Yep. I usually say like just do something that just kind of like makes things new for them or even like giving them some new thing to do. Whether it's even like taking them out of their cage and putting them in something. Not for chameleons, I don't think it's much for chameleons.
But like leopard geckos or bearded dragons to put them in some sort of a maze ish type thing so they can try to figure out their way around things. Or a climbing thing for them.
Oren: I think the pocket pets would really like a maze.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, pocket pets might like, might like a maze type thing.
You can like, hide things in the maze.
Oren: I'm thinking the way in, the way [00:33:00] out. I don't know, there could be like, a big, there could be like, their favorite treat maybe.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, you can even put ... you can even make that out of the boxes that you get from Christmas.
Oren: If they like, If they like strawberries, you could put a strawberry there.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah, exactly.
Oren: If they like, if they like strawberries, and you think it'd be appropriate to get them a strawberry, because they have hopefully not been naughty that year, and they deserve it.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Oren: There's strawberries.
Dr. Sugerman: Hopefully Santa brings them strawberries.
Oren: They just need to work a little bit for it.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah.
Oren: Because nothing's free.
Dr. Sugerman: All right,
Oren: And have fun in the maze.
Dr. Sugerman: Yeah. All right, buddy. I think we should wrap it up now since we had two topics there. All right.
Oren: Kind of like three.
Dr. Sugerman: Three topics. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Thank you everybody again for joining us. Want to say thank you?
Oren: Thanks.
Dr. Sugerman: And as always, please keep your pet happy healthy and safe. Thank you guys.
Oren: Bye
Dr. Sugerman: You know, Oren usually asks me [00:34:00] questions about dogs and cats, and so I readily have those answers. But when he asks me questions about the exotic animals, I don't know all of those numbers off the top of my head. So I did go back so I could just give a couple more concrete answers for some questions that he had.
He asked about the lifespan of some of those rodents. So guinea pigs usually live for about five to seven years, which I was pretty close on. He had also asked about, like, how many babies or how many pups that they have. And they have one to eight per litter, but they're gonna have five litters per year.
So that's why we don't have male and female guinea pigs together. Hamsters, he asked about, they live up to about two years. Most of the time they don't live that long, unfortunately. They're great little creatures to have. I love them, but they don't usually live very long. Gerbils, they live for about three to four years.
And then he asked about the lizards as well. So chameleons for about three to ten years, just depending on the species. So panther chameleons, they live the least, so three to five years [00:35:00] versus things like Jackson chameleons, I believe, are the ones that live the longest. And then iguanas 12 to 15 years and leopard geckos 10 to 20 years.
Just some statistics for you there, just so you have a better idea of what kind of exotic might be a good fit for you. And we didn't even cover all of them, right? There's still like ferrets and rabbits and lots and lots of different reptiles and amphibians and lots of really cool other exotic animals.
But those are the ones he specifically asked me about. So just so you have some ideas of those. As always, thank you guys, I really appreciate it, and next week we'll be talking about people who might have gotten Christmas puppies and Christmas kittens, cause we were one of them one year, so I understand that.
Alright, thanks guys!
Thank you guys for listening this week. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or you just want to say hi, you can email me at Suggs, S U G G S @ VetsplanationPodcast.com or visit the website at [00:36:00] VetsplanationPodcast.com or find us on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok at Vetsplanation. Thank you all for listening and I'll see you back here next week.