Desert horned lizard eating harvester ants
Like 1 Dislike 0 Published on 10 Aug 2011
Horned lizards have a diet in the wild that is made up mostly of harvester ants, but do also eat other insects. According to what I've learned, they require the ants for folic acid and will die in captivity without the ants. I get the ants from antsalive.com. This little guy is captive bred, bought in a pet store. They never fed him ants so he's actually afraid of the ants. I feed him only 3-4 at a time so he doesn't get overwhelmed. Initially he's indifferent to the ants and then after a minute or so he notices them. If he's hungry he gobbles them up like in this video. If not then he runs from them and decides to eat them 10 minutes later. This is a chore for me, because I have to feed him 3-4 ants every hour or so, whenever I notice that he finally ate them. I believe an adult can eat around 60 ants or more a day. This guy eats about 10 a day when I work and I supplement with tiny lobster roaches or crickets at night before he sleeps. On the weekends I can feed him more frequently and he'll get up to 30-40 ants per day. I'm hoping time will break him of his fear so I can feed him more less frequently. He's still a juvenile, so he's got some growing to do. I am hoping that will help to as the adults don't seem to be bothered by the ants biting them. But this guy freaks out if he gets bit, so I'm assuming he feels it of course. Apparently these ants have a nasty bite. It's interesting because he now knows red ants are evil, but he has no problem devouring black ants from outside. I'll post a video of him eating lobster roaches as it's way more interesting than watching him run from ants.