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Homosexual behavior in bearded dragons

P

pdragon

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I am 100% serious by asking this. There are a lot of the same questions on these forums, and I thought that this is a good one because I have seen it many times, but it is never really brought up. Has anyone seen males trying to "lock up" with other males, or vice versa? I'm not talking about just biting the back of the neck, but auctually trying to mate. Does anyone notice that females that do this never lay eggs? I read in the paper that there are over 450 different species in the animal kingdom that are documented having homosexual behavior. Being that I use newspaper for substrate, I pick up all kinds of info, LOL. Any imput would be great. Josh
 
pdragon said:
Has anyone seen males trying to "lock up" with other males, or vice versa? I'm not talking about just biting the back of the neck, but auctually trying to mate.
Click to expand...

I don't keep adult males together but I have witnessed male juvies going through the motions.

pdragon said:
Does anyone notice that females that do this never lay eggs?
Click to expand...

I'm a bit puzzled by this question. It would be damn hard for 2 females to breed and lay eggs........ Or are you saying that they don't produce eggs even when put with a male?

pdragon said:
I read in the paper that there are over 450 different species in the animal kingdom that are documented having homosexual behavior.
Click to expand...

450 different species is a pretty small number considering the overall number of species on the planet. However, it makes one wonder how many species engage in homosexual behavior when no one is around to document it. I would bet 450 is not even close to the actual answer. I also wonder what exactly they consider "homosexual behavior"?
 
I should have been a little more specific. Have you ever seen your young males trying to lock up? Some males will all of a sudden show breeding behavior at 5-6 months of age. The females that try to act like males, never seem to ever produce eggs, even when kept with a male. Sometimes, they try to mate with the males! When these questionable females are seperated from the male after breeding, and put back with another female(sister), she would try to copulate with her sister. No hemipenes would come out, they would just touch vents.These females could be hermaphrodites, who knows. That probably could be the reason for this activity. These females also show every indication of being female(small vent, no bulges, small pores, etc). I have only seen this with just a handful of males and females ever. Just when you think that you've figured out dragons, things like this happen, lol.
 
Man, my writing is terrible. My 8 year old son writes better than me! I forgot to add this: I have seen this behavior in a handful of my dragons over the last ten years, but I have also seen it in outdoor raised dragons too. If they are showing this behavior in outdoor semi-natural conditions, maybe they show this behavior in the wild. Josh
 
I can't say this for certain, since I have never witnessed it in dragons, but in many species, what people will see and recognize as "homosexual behavior" really has nothing at all to do with sex. For example, you can often see one male dog "humping" another male dog (or a female and a female, or a female on a male)...he's not really trying to breed, it is used as a show of dominance over the other dog. For the most part, this is what I would believe is the explanation.

On the other hand, just like some human teens, sometimes raging hormones cause them to do things they normally wouldn't do, lol.
 
Over here in the cow fields they put die packs on the rumps of the cows. When a cow comes into season the other cows will mount it, thus breaking the die pack and alerting the farmers so they can remove it and put it in with the bull to breed....

Now I'm not suggesting anything, just thought it was another interesting point to make in the whole animal kingdom strange behaviour file! :notallthe
 
That's a good point. I have been searching around, and really not finding anything at all. This question is a bit out of the ordinary, but a good one. There has got to be other breeders that have seen this behavior. My collection of dragons is pretty big and in a relatively small place. During the breeding season, I notice that when a male is trying to mate, they all seem to want to mate at one time. It's almost like there is just a ton of hormones/phermones going at the same time. These are the times when I wittness females trying to mate with other females. Not just biting the neck, but touching vents(with no visible hemipenes or anything). It could be dominance, but why are they trying to copulate? These same females when put with a male, will sometimes try to mate with him, or bite the back of his neck.( could they be hermaphrodites?, they never lay eggs) Even when solo male dragons have no visible contact with breeding males, they will all of a sudden bob their heads with a black throat within seconds after the other male bites the female's neck. This is the main reason why I think that there is a mass amount of hormones/phermones floating around. Thanks for the input, this stuff is interesting to me. It's a bit different from the norm. Josh
 
That's interesting. Maybe when female dragons feel dominant over other females, they are ready to breed. Hmmmmm.....great info. Josh
 
thats weird i have never herd of a bearded dragon doing that kind of stuff
 
I Found something!

Okay, I have been searching around for info, and found a few paragraphs in a book that may explain some things. The book: Leopard Geckos, Their captive husbandry and reproduction by Jon Coote. This book has a section labeled: Homosexual Lizards, pg.47. This info may not be very politically correct, but it may provide some good insight on why this is happening. Here it goes:
It has also been discovered that those few males produced at tempetatures most likely to produce females are( in politically correct speech) sexually challenged. Or perhaps more correctly, given a females brain in a males body. They subsequently show no inclination to breed with females, and do not respond to males with threatning tail drumming behavior, rather they wag their tails from side to side like females. The other male may then try to court this gay lizard with biting behavior, but this behavior will simply put these males to flight.
Similarly those few females produced at tempetatures calculated to produce virtually all males will respond themselves like males. That is they will tail drum and threaten other males, and even fight with them. They may also go through the same mating behavior with receptive females, though of course there could be no auctual mating.
Interestingly enough a similar result is seen with some twin(male plus female) born lambs, that have shared the same placenta. In this case it is apparently the placental transmission of male hormone during gestation which causes the female to develop male brain characteristics. Subsequently she will respond like a ram, mounting other females, and fighting with any introduced male.
This info was written word for word out of the book. In my experience, dragons cannot be incubated for males and females. The female dragon that I have that shows male behavior, came from a clutch of nearly all males. Her sister too has never bred and is going on her fourth year of age. I wonder if because these two females came from a near all male clutch, this is the reason why they show male characteristics. I also wonder if a mostly female clutch will produce males that have female characteristics. It could be coincidental with my females. Interesting stuff. Any input would be great. Thanks, Josh
 
That's interesting reading Josh. and an interesting topic... heheh... We just shake our heads at them and let them do their thing - or separate them if its too rough.

We've seen females try to breed other females here also. Sometimes it is as they are growing up and in a communal cages as sub-adults - I chalked it up to confusion at first. BUT last year we also had a female who had just recently finished her breeding cycle of multiple clutches try to breed her sister after we pulled them from their males. She bobbed & stomped her foot, bit, wiggled and locked up.
Usually though, with a dominant female in a communal cage, she will act the males part without - but locking up. This seems to be more like establishing a pecking order, similar to what birds do.
 
Thank you very much. There's really no place else to get this sort of info. The whole understanding of reptiles is far from being figured out. I hate to be the bearer of odd questions, but I have to figure out why these things happen. I'm the guy who goes to the dentist and asks how many gold and silver teeth they have given out, or asking the person at the DMV how many times they get yelled at every day, LOL. After years of observing and breeding dragons, I have noticed that there are so many un-answered questions about dragon behavior. For instance, in outdoor raised Rankins, I have noticed on hot days(90 degrees and above), they will sit straight up and down.....all of them. I figured maybe they are trying to limit the amount of surface area so they don't overheat. Or how dragons somehow know what plants to eat and what's poisonous to them. I remember feeding dragons in the late morning, and noticing all of them all hiding under the plants and pallets. It wasn't too hot outside. I looked up and saw a hawk flying overhead! They all knew immediatly to hide, and not one was in the open. Things like females mating with females and vice versa is pretty bizarre, and really never talked about. I guess not too many people want to admit Spike likes his brother!,LOL I appreciate all the info. Thanks, Josh
 
hahaha... we once had a male who would bob at the other males and carry on like you wouldn't believe. Absolutely beautiful dragon - that had no interest in any female what-so-ever! He'd get soooo excited and then do his business on the darned basking rock. We sent him off to another breeder - and he did the same thing there.
He ended up making someone a wonderful pet. ~sigh~
 
Females locking up

I have witnessed this, just this weekend actually. I walked in on my Chris Allen female, Crayola, locked up with another female, Sphinx. It was extremely bizarre. I have three females housed together. Crayola is the biggest, but occasionally she and Sphinx will have a little argument about who is the dominant dragon of the arena. Lately, both Crayola and Sphinx have been showing a lot of male-like behavior. Head bobbing, etc. But Crayola has been the most extreme. Even her beard has become nearly black on a few occasions. We're sure she is a female though.. Anyhow, I walked in on Crayola and Sphinx and Crayola was completely locked on her, eyes CLOSED! i picked up her immediately after the "copulation" was over and couldn't see a hemipenes specifically, but it did appear that her vent was slightly open, almost like she had retracted her hemipenes. VERY STRANGE. She's been housed with these two females for a long while, and I have never seen this before. And this female is PROVEN, which is even more bizarre. Nothing this year. But last year produced several clutches. Last point is Crayola only seems to show her "male aggressions" towards Sphinx, and NOT the other female in the cage. My guess is that these two dragons occasionally battle it out for dominance, and because of all the hormones raging currently, they have just chosen this way to express it.

And lastly... none of these females are receptive to males right now. I have placed Sphinx in with an "aggressive" male on several occasions, and he'll try, but she is not interested. So the male has been unsuccessful. But the strange thing is, she was locked up by a female! VERY WEIRD.
 
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