Can they be Cohabilitated?

These little Anoles make a great lizard to cohabit, the best way to do it is a single male and female per enclosure as males can be more aggresive together, however this being said the bigger the enclosure the better as this significantly reduces the risk of scuffles, if your enclosure is a good size you will still get displays of threat behaviors such as raised Dulaps and chasing behaviors but these generally subside quickly.

What size do they get? -

The are a small arboreal lizard that are generally between 15-20cm from snout to tail, two thirds of the size is there tail so they can appear smaller than they acctually are.

When will i see them?

They are a diurnal species of Anole which means you will see them chilling about the enclosure during the day, they like to stay in place for prolonged periods of time and observe wahts going on around them which almost makes them seem like they have a higher level of intellegence. Other than that they roam around the enclosure looking for the best places to bask and will happily chill with other anoles to bask. They also exibit  stints of speedy activity chasing invertibrates and each other if you have males they will drop there dulap from under there head as a display of dominanace.

Costs to keep

How much will it roughly cost you to keep an individual Green Anole well including the setup and ongoing costs, this does not include unexpected vet bills or the rising cost of products over time.

Used for energy calculation : https://www.sust-it.net/energy-calculator.php

Distribution - These anoles are extreamly common in there range as you can see below from the ammount of user submission sightings on inaturalist, they are primarily found in the east coast of the USA down to the edge of mexico.

Image captured from iNaturalist

Below are some examples of the places and habitats they live in, the screenshots are from two areas within Florida and Texas, As you can see the areas they inhabit are Temerate forests which is ideal for there arboreal nature. The two views are from a roadside near places they have been spotted on Inaturalist.

Rating - (Ease of care) - Fairly easy - ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆

Wild Caught Majority ★★ - Automatic two stars for difficulty straight away due to alot of wild caught imports, they can come dehydrated and full of parasites so it can make getting them establish quite difficult.

Humidity requirements ★ - Keeping them hydrated and in an enviroment with higher humidity is quite important for them shedding and keeping there body functioning correctly, alot of new keepers of these anoles dont get this right and this can be fatal.

Setup Requirements -

To start you will need an arborial enclosure in my case i created one from scratch 75cm tall by 45 cm wide by 50cm deep, the extra deepness allowed for a foam backing to be sprayed on the back. This size allows for each of the 4 i have to have there own areas to hide and the hight allows them to climb around like there in there natural enviroment. Below are some examples of terrariums and what limit of numbers you could put in them.

Substrate options and decor-

The substrate needs to be able to retain water to keep the humidity up, so the best type to use is either a coco fibre /top soil mix or a coco fibre/ peat mix. Once all is mixed in i would advise using live plants for decor and enrichment as the liards will use these as leverage to move around and get the most out of there setup.The more space you can fill teh better as they are excellent climbers and will utalise all the space that they can.

Heating and lighting-

These guys require a decent lighting system that you can vary throughout the year, i use a zoo med duel dome system and during the summer have one 25w bulb turned on and during the winter both of them on dependant on room temprature. A 10.0 UVB bulb is required, this spans over two thirds of the top of the cage, in there natural enviroment they have a high dose of UV throughout the year on average and at peaks can get to between 10-11 UVI

Diet and nutrition -

There diets are relativly uncomplicated to attain however as these are not a species you can handle its quite hard to measure there weight so you have to eyeball how they are getting on when feeding them by looking at the size of there abdomens, feed them a mix of insects dusted with calcium carbonate suppliment with D3 and vitimin A and other multivitimins and in occasion crested gecko diet.

The insects i would suggest are as follows :

• Small Locusts
• Small crickets
• Drosophila hydei fruit flies (The bigger ones)
• Meal worms
• Wax worms
• Calci Worms
• Crested gecko diet

Feed them once every 2-3 days per each indevidual feed between 4-8 locusts or crickets and suppliment other diets every so often such as the fruit flies and crested gecko diets. If you want to extend the times between feeding incase you are away for more than a couple of days put in a dish of meal worms dusted along with there usual diet before leaving, they are not there favorite food as they dont move as much as they like but from my own observations i have noticed they pick at them when they have finished there other food sources.

Another thing they enjoy is crested gecko diet, its a sweet treat they use for energy and hydration, ive always found that its best to keep it a watery consistancy when feeding as they will use if for additional hydration.

A variety of food items is key for most reptile species so this is no exception, the more of a varienty you give the healthier the animal will be.

Misting is required with this species and it is important to spray them regularly to keep the humidity up to there natural levels, you can mist and spray daily or every other day, they will activly drink the droplets on leaves and its best practice to leave a shallow bowl in the bottom of the enclosure incase the droplets evaporate when they want a drink. Either that or get a USB powered Water pump with hose and have it flow down decor to the bottom of ythe enclosure like a small stream.

Behaviours-

These lizards are absolutly facinating to watch they display a lot of different behaviours that you simply do not see with other lizards, the main reason for this is the ability to keep them in groups and mixing them with some other placid species such as long tail lizards and some people have had sucess with poison dart frogs.

They are very acrobatic and personable lizards, with there indipendent eyes they almost feel like they have more intelegence that other lizards, they move very quickly when they want to and can jump around very quickly and from this i can tell you they are not very handlable which i will go over in a section later on.

I keep my ones with longtail lizards, both species keep to themselves when i first introduced them the long tails where very curious and did little hand waves that them and tried to appriach them multiple times, after the 4th attempt they gave up and now they ignore each other.

There ability to colour change from brown to green vice versa is a behaviour they use to blend in to foliage although sometimes they are not very good at it and set themselfs up to the wrong colours, regardless its facinating to watch.

The males are sexually dimorphic and can display a flag light peice of red/pink scaled skin below there chin down there neck, this is called a dulap and is used promarily to communicate between anoles.

Handling -

They are a very skittish species when it comes to handling i do not advise it as when you approch them 90% of the time they are going to freak out and run, if you must handle them which i still dont recommend i would suggest letting them walk on you naturally, you can do this by putting your hand out and waiting, they do like the warmth of human skin so they generally settle pretty quick, just pay attention to there behavior as you really dont want one scuttling off up a wall never to be seen again. Saying this they do become used to human presence pretty quick somake a great pet to tong feed/hand feed use the same common sense tactics as above and you can go to wrong.

Day and night Cycle - 

If we look at the information of the day and night cycle in Tampa one of the areas that the Anoles inhabit you can see during the winter months the ammount of daytime hours drops to around 11-11.5 hrs through the period of late october to March time. And during the summer months april to september the daylight hours are around 12-14 hours at its peak. So a varied cycle will add further wellbeing to your animals as they will be able to syncronise there bodies to this which allows for more natural hormone cycles which in the long term boosts things such as there immune systems and natural behaviours.

Common health issues -

The majority of these lizards at current are wild caught unfortunatly so the majority of there health issues stem from ther previous past in the wild, these are generally thinks such as parasites and the age of these animals, they generally only live for 4-5 years and being majority wild caught the age of these animals are unknown so you could potentially be buying an animal with a very short life span. Due to there Size and skittishness i can see taking these to a vet a challenge.

Humidity requirements -

There is a fairly big range of natural humidity ranges throughout the year with these Anoles, they experience a rainly season through out the summer months starting the middle of may and stopping during september, humidity levels during this time range from 70% to 100%.

From this i would suggest keeping them above 70% in the summer months would be optimum for wellbeing. In the summer months the precipiataion levels increase to around 40% chance of rain per day up to its peak in july of 70% chance a day, So for every day in the week 3 days there will be rain all the way up to 5 out of the 7 days of the week.

Moving onto the winter patterns we can see that it drops all the way down to 14% relative humidity in Janurary but the winter period of October and March averages around 50%, so from this i think a sensible drop in humidity over the winter is a good idea and can be achieved by not spraying everyday, during the winter period between the start of November up to the start of May, the precipitation levels during this period range between 15-20% which equates to around 1 - 1.5 days a week of rainy weather.

So overall using a automatic misting system throughout the year is probabaly the best course of action followed by ajustments for the summer and winter months. Winter 1.5 minutes spray every 6-7 days, followed by general spraying leaves for hydration each day. During the Summer set the misting system to 30-45 seconds every 12 hours to keep the humidity up.

Cleaning-

As with every lizard it is important to keep tehre hygeine in tip top condition to avoid unwanted infections to your animals. Dependant on how you set them up a gental spray from a water bottle on feaces attached to live plant leaves churn the substrate at the bottom and add isopods and springtails will keep and even balance of cleanlyness along with spot picking larger fecices when nessisary will keep these guys in top top conditions and wash decor every so often to aviod bacteria build up. Replace the substrate every 3 months to avoid toxic buildup of waste or sooner depending on the way the enclosure is setup, if you setup a full bioactive enclosure these periods of time can be increased.

Brumation -

Avalability -

Not as avalable in the UK as they are in the US as they are imported so will set you back around £25 each wild caught, there are not many people breeding these as they are so cheap to buy which is really unfortunate being wild caught, they are such a charasmatic lizard, Anoles in general are like this, i always think of them as acrobatic versions of Chameleons.

References- Weather Spark, 

Gallery -

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