Gender Determination

Knowing the sex of your lizard  is important – it has an influence on how you need to care for him/her and well as determining certain disease process he/she is susceptible to (for example female lizards may develop follicular stasis or egg binding).

Males will often fight and may need to be kept separate.

Many species of lizard are sexually dimorphic, this simply means that males & females look different. These differences are not obvious as hatchlings and should become more obvious as the lizards grow up.

The males may have bigger  broader heads and necks, more muscle and may have more obvious ‘pores’ on the underside of their hind legs. Some males will have bulges behind the cloaca where the two hemi penises are (yes, lizards and snakes have two half penises! )

If the species does not have this visual difference, (or if you only have one animal it can be difficult to tell) then our vets may be able to help.

We have more experience, may be able to evert, or “pop out” the hemi penises or probe the cloaca.

DNA sex testing so far has been developed for iguanas and Komodo dragons (we hope none of our clients are keeping these!) and more species will be added as more research is done.