Russ Gurley was up talking tegus next. I had to laugh when he referred to them as a large lizard, but I do suppose that while they seem small to me and my cyclura, but they do fit into a larger species. One of the hardest part locating information is that there are a variety of Latin names used on the information. Showing diagrams on how to best identify the species, he also went down the bare basics of tegus. Russ showed a big difference to him between Blue Tegus and the other species kept in captivity and the others and that was temperament. Russ mentioned he didn’t keep pet reptiles, which is a big difference when dealing with temperament. Displaying the differences in bites, the blue tend to be far less skittish and more docile. Russ tried to locate the originating locale of the species and really ran into problems. Id’ing them has been hard and getting people to talk to him from Brazil was even harder. One suspicion is that they are Tupinambis duseni. When taking the color from photos of known duseni and known blues, they do look to be the same species, however there is no proof. One thing that I really take away from this is the ability to burrow is amazingly important to this species of lizards. Be it offering natural things like the grasses he offers or the ability to burrow in care fresh bedding, they need to have a hidey cave that allows them to dig down and burrow for both comfort and protection. In captivity, they are “rodent assassins” in Russ’s words, but wild populations of adults are a very omnivorous. He offers a high quality cat food, fruit baby food, a mix of veggies most of the feedings and he offers rodents one day a week.