Bearded dragon Pogona

Pogona is an Australian agamid genus of seven species; the animal kept as a pet and meant by bearded dragon is almost always the central bearded dragon, Pogona vitticeps, and the facts here belong to that species. It comes from the semi-arid woodlands of central Australia, is semi-arboreal and largely sedentary, inactive for roughly 80 percent of the day, and is omnivorous, taking live insects and chopped vegetables, insects daily as a juvenile and two or three times a week as an adult. Adults in one radiographic study weighed 101 to 547 grams with a snout-vent length of 15 to 23 cm. Everything clinical follows from ectothermy. Wild animals are active between 20 and 40 degrees Celsius and captives need a basking gradient, provided in studies at 35 to 50 degrees, together with ultraviolet B light: dietary vitamin D3 alone leaves circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D low, and poor calcium absorption from hypovitaminosis D drives nutritional secondary hyperparathyroidism, among the commonest disorders of captive reptiles. Husbandry failure is the norm; in one survey of 220 keepers, 85 percent missed at least one of temperature, lighting, diet and refuge, and 56 percent of lizard owners provided no UVB at all. Drug handling is temperature-dependent, so a patient held outside its preferred optimal temperature zone will not metabolise a dose predictably.