HOW TO TAME YOUR CRESTED GECKO | BEST TRAINING METHODS!

In the last 15 years, Crested Geckos have quickly become the most commonly kept pet lizard in herpetoculture. Their adorable appearance, variability in color and pattern combined with their ease of care has earned them the opportunity to be cherished as pets by families all around the world. Although these animals are easy to care for, they can be a bit jumpy and flighty. So in today's video, I'm going to be teaching you how to tame your Crested Gecko. What's up everybody! Welcome back to another video on my channel. My name is Dion and you're watching Reptiliatus. Well everyone, today we are going to be talking about one of the most requested topics I've had in the comment section and that is on how to train or tame your Crested Gecko, the Corallophis ciliatus. These animals are fantastic pets. One of the questions I get asked so frequently is, how are my Crested Geckos so tame and relaxed? As you can see, I'm holding my Crested Gecko named Pingu here. She's a lily white and she has a very calm disposition. She wants to jump onto my shoulder, that's fine. But overall, she's not freaking out, running around, trying to get away from me. And so today, what we're going to do is go over a few steps that I use to sort of tame and condition these animals to tolerate some level of handling. So if that's something you're interested in learning about your Crested Gecko, you definitely want to stick around for this video because you're going to learn a lot and it's probably going to help you improve the relationship between your gecko and yourself. Now, I want to quickly introduce myself. My name is Dion. I make videos about specialty pets such as reptiles, amphibians, and different kinds of invertebrates. So if you're interested in learning about these incredible animals, definitely consider subscribing down below and then dinging that little notification bell afterwards so you don't miss any of my future content. I post videos every Tuesday and Friday. Now, before we get too far in the video, I do want to give a quick little disclaimer about this whole process. It's important to remember that we don't want to anthropomorphize these little critters. And what I mean by that is sort of instill human characteristics and attributes that sort of make us think that they behave and feel things the way a human does. Reptiles have evolved in a completely different way than we have. And it's not to say that they're stupid. It's not to say that they lack any form of intelligence. It's just a different process of evolution that results in an animal that behaves and has different types of instincts than, say, a dog or cat. These animals have been domesticated, and that is the process in which we selectively breed animals to live alongside us. Now, crested geckos have been bred for generations in captivity, and they make fantastic pets. But again, it's important to remember that we don't anthropomorphize them. We don't say things like, oh, they like to cuddle and blah, blah, blah. Does that make sense? Now, normally, we have a few forms of popular style conditioning. There's a classical conditioning in which a certain trigger results in a certain reaction in the animal. So for example, let's say every time I ring a bell, I feed my dog. Eventually, that dog is going to start salivating every time it hears the bell because the animal's been classically conditioned to know that when the bell rings, it's going to be fed. Now, the next type of conditioning is called operant conditioning. And so this one would be, for example, if I had my dog jump through a hoop and receive food afterwards as a reward. So the animal is learning a behavior by associating it with its consequence. An example of a reptile doing this is me working on teaching Sabzi to jump onto my lap when I tap my leg. And usually, as often as possible, I reward her with food every time she does it successfully to reinforce that behavior. So what I want to say about that is that those are the most popular styles of conditioning associated with training animals. And of course, the way to an animal's heart, whether it's a dog or a cat or anything else, is food. You want to use food as your primary source of motivation or training to encourage the animal to do what you want it to do for you. I do also want to say that it is my own personal belief that many types of reptiles are a very wide spectrum of cognitive capacity or intelligence. For example, I would say that varanids and crocodilians are probably the most intelligent reptiles on the planet. And I'm sure that there are lots of interesting species out there that can rival those animals. But respectfully and a bit bluntly, I'm not so sure that our derpy little crested geckos fall into those categories. We have to acknowledge that what we're talking about here today has nothing to do with training your crested gecko to do a trick or follow you or jump on you when you want it to. You got to leave that sort of thing for your monitor lizards, etc. But what we can do with the crested gecko is condition the animal to tolerate handling and feel comfortable or dare I say safe in their owner's hands. And from there, that can even be taken to the next level which allows for the owner to do some hand feeding and tongue feeding. Okay friends, so the first thing we're going to discuss today is handleability and working on handling. Now you have to remember that you're huge and your gecko is very small in comparison. Naturally, its instincts would tell it that something reaching over to it and trying to grab it most likely wants to cause it harm, consume it, you know, something like that. So when you were interacting with your crested gecko, whether it's tamed or not, you really want to move slowly and calmly around it. Make it aware that you are coming into its home. I'm not saying clap your hands and call out its name, you know, like, oh, yeah, like nothing like that. You want to move into the enclosure calmly and you want to gently coax the lizard to let it know that, yes, you're there, everything's going to be fine and then you gently scoop it up. Now that's assuming everything goes well. There are times where that initial touch triggers a flight response. If you do not want a frog butt crested gecko, do not chase after it when you accidentally trigger a flight response. If the gecko bolts when you nudge it gently, do not pursue it. Wait a second, let it run off to wherever part of the enclosure it's going to pause and rest briefly before making a second attempt. That's really important because otherwise you're literally telling it everything it needs to know instinctively to drop its tail. Something just tried to grab me. I'm scared, I run away, that something is still after me. Let me automatize my tail, which is dropping the tail, so that it goes after that instead of me. Make sense? Yeah, so be very calm. Once you've coaxed your gecko onto your hand, you can proceed to move slowly in a treadmill-like motion. When your gecko moves forward, place your next hand in front of the animal in a continuous motion. Eventually, the gecko should calm down a bit and rest as long as you aren't moving around too much. Be mindful of the animal's weight shifting as it moves. You'll quickly learn to recognize when the gecko is about to jump. It's safest to practice this at a desk or close to the ground so that if your crested gecko decides to leap, it is much less likely to hurt itself from falling. Also keep in mind that practicing this handling process in front of the animal's enclosure often doesn't work well because they recognize their home as a safe space and usually try to hop back into it. So you've been working on handling for a few weeks and you've gotten to the point where you can have your crested gecko comfortably sit on your hand for several minutes where can you go from here? Well, you can hand feed them. Honestly, nothing is more special than holding your pet crested gecko and offering it some food. It's pretty wholesome having your pet trust you enough to sit on your hand while you provide them with the sustenance they need to enjoy a happy and healthy life. To achieve this, all you'll need is to make sure your gecko is hungry, prepare its favorite meal replacement diet or mashed fruit, and approach them slowly with the dish you've prepared it in. Your crested gecko will quickly sense the sweet meal and begin lapping away at it with their tongue. For today's question of the day, I'd like to ask you all what is your favorite way to interact with your reptile pet? Let me know in the comment section down below as I'd love to know what your favorite way of interacting with your pet reptile is. Is it feeding them, handling them, a combination of both? Do you enjoy observing them doing their own thing in the enclosure? As always, I'll give your comment a heart and we'll engage in a little bit of a conversation. Thanks, everybody. Well, everyone, there you have it. I sincerely hope you enjoyed learning a few of my tips and tricks to how you can condition and sort of tame your crested gecko to be more tolerant of handling. I'd also like to take this moment to thank my two newest channel patrons over on Patreon. Thank you so much to Nineleaf Clover and Shannon for joining my Patreon family. Your support means so much to me. I look forward to getting to know you better over on the platform. And if you're also interested in supporting this channel, you can become a channel patron for as little as $2 a month. You can find the link to my Patreon page, as well as my Reptiliatus merch store in the description links down below. So there you go, everyone. I hope you have a wonderful week. And I can't wait to see you all on Friday for our next video. Hope you enjoyed and take care.