Decorating the floor of your bearded dragon’s terrarium with sand is all fancy and cool until it starts eating the sand. When you first realize your bearded dragon is eating the sand, it might come as a shocking worry. In line with that, the question arises. Is it normal for bearded dragons to eat sand?
Bearded dragons in captivity do actually eat the sand found around them. This is indeed a natural behavior that is found in bearded dragons due to its habits in the wild. The most acceptable explanation to your bearded dragon consuming sand is that it’s trying to obtain calcium that it’s lacking.
When you plan to create a homely enclosure for your bearded dragon, the first substance that comes to mind would be sand. Such is the history of bearded dragons with sand that it both goes together like the old English idiom “hand in glove”.
The Reasons Bearded Dragons Eat Sand
What is sand? Sand is basically a small granular substance formed by finely divided rocks and minerals. It is very widely found all around the globe.
More importantly, in a bearded dragon’s natural habitat, it is always surrounded by sand. In deserts where bearded dragons are commonly spotted, there won’t be much to see but sand.
Nevertheless, even in the wild, bearded dragons have been spotted eating sand. Due to that, pops the question: “What is the reason behind my bearded dragon eating sand?”
Calcium Deficiency
The primary reason behind your bearded dragon chowing down on sand would be a lack of calcium in its system. Unlike humans, bearded dragons are not capable of communicating their needs.
Thus, your bearded dragon would just attempt to solve its problems by itself. This leads to your bearded dragon eating the sand with the hope of gaining some extra calcium from it.
This habit is also widely seen in wild bearded dragons found in their natural habitat. However, there is a massive difference in terms of the dirt found in the desert in comparison to the sand substrate placed in your bearded dragon’s cage.
Therefore, when you catch your bearded dragon eating sand, know that it is lacking in calcium. This habit is a natural instinct of trying to recoup calcium for its body. Unfortunately, it is not a good habit and could be detrimental to your bearded dragon’s health.
Sticky Tongue
There are also occasions whereby your bearded dragon may accidentally eat sand. Bearded dragons enjoy hunting and its most lethal weapon is its tongue.
They could strike their tongue at such a speed that it could smash the prey to death. Another characteristic of your bearded dragon’s tongue that is usually overlooked is the stickiness of it.
A bearded dragon’s tongue contains a gooey texture that allows it to trap the prey to its tongue, preventing escapes. On occasions, especially if your bearded dragon misses its target, it could strike its tongue onto the sand substrate.
The gooey texture then sticks the sand onto your bearded dragon’s tongue. As your bearded dragon retracts its tongue, the sand would also enter its mouth. Therefore, your bearded dragon may unintentionally swallow the sand.
If this rarely happens, then it’s nothing to be worried about. However, if your bearded dragon isn’t a good hunter and eats sand frequently, then preventive actions need to be taken.
Curiosity
Bearded dragons are intelligent animals. With intelligence grows a sense of curiosity. Believe it or not, your bearded dragon gets very curious about its surroundings.
Similar to a baby human, your bearded dragon would utilize its tongue and mouth mainly to sense its surroundings. In the process of sensing its surroundings, your bearded dragon may lick onto the floor of the cage and tasting some sand out of curiosity.
However, things might take a sour turn if your bearded dragon starts to fancy the taste of sand. With this, you would start noticing your bearded dragon licking the sand very often.
This is not a behavior that is healthy for your bearded dragon and immediate intervention would need to be taken. Sand is only meant to make your bearded dragon comfortable with its cage, not to be eaten.
In addition to that, it’s also advisable to consult a vet about any possible complications that could already be caused by your bearded dragon eating sand.
What Happens If Bearded Dragons Eat Sand?
There are many foods that bearded dragons in captivity can eat, and is not one of them. The sand that is commonly used as a substrate can pose certain health complications for your bearded dragon if it’s consumed.
A small quantity of sand eaten by mistake is not something to be worried about. However, there are possibilities that your bearded dragon could be eating more sand than you think. In this instance, the effects on your bearded dragon’s body could be harmful.
Impaction
Bearded dragons have a very sensitive digestive system. Not everything that passes through their stomach can get digested. When a certain item eaten by your bearded dragon doesn’t get digested in the stomach, it would not proceed down to the intestines.
Instead, the object would remain in the stomach and cause impaction to your bearded dragon. This is precisely what would happen to your bearded dragon if it were to constantly consume sand.
When it is just small amounts of sand, the risk is low since the sand would be slowly but surely get washed out of your bearded dragon’s stomach. However, if your bearded dragon chows on sand frequently or in large amounts or both, then the situation is critical and it’s best to visit a vet immediately.
If this isn’t stopped, sand would accumulate in its digestive tract and slowly form a block. Once your bearded dragon’s digestive tracts are blocked, it will not be able to fully move its bowel.
This is pretty much how impaction works. A bearded dragon in captivity suffering from impaction is not ideal. Furthermore, if the problem is not sorted quickly, impaction could be fatal to your bearded dragon.
Loss of Appetite
By eating sand, your bearded dragon would also be experiencing a loss of appetite. As your bearded dragon is too busy filling its stomach up with sand, it may not be interested in consuming any of the food that you would be serving it.
Although it is said that an adult bearded dragon could go 2 to 4 weeks without eating, this is not healthy for your bearded dragon. Bearded dragons in captivity need to be provided with minerals and vitamins either through food or supplements daily.
The lack of these daily vitamins and minerals would be bad for your bearded dragon. Furthermore, sand does not provide any sort of nutritional value to your bearded dragon’s system. Thus, eating sand and avoiding proper meals could make your bearded dragon weak and sickly.
Falling Sick
Bearded dragons in captivity are prone to falling sick. Unlike their wild counterparts, domesticated bearded dragons depend entirely on their owners to provide them with sufficient amounts of supplements and food to keep them healthy.
Even though you are not feeding it sand, your bearded dragon would resort to eating sand in an attempt to supplement its body. Regrettably, the sand your bearded dragon consumes most likely has no minerals or vitamins in it.
Therefore by eating sand, your bearded dragon won’t be receiving the nutrient it needs. This would directly affect its immune system. With an immune system that is not working at full capacity, the chances of your bearded dragon falling sick would increase.
If you were to catch your bearded dragon eating sand regularly, then it’s best to immediately take it to a vet and have it checked. This would also help prevent other complications from arising due to your bearded dragon’s sand eating habits.
Lethargic
Another problem that would commonly be witnessed in bearded dragons that are eating sand is inactivity. Bearded dragons are naturally active animals.
However, when a bearded dragon is lacking the nutrients needed by its system, it may become lethargic. Due to that, it may just settle down on a pool of sand and continue eating it.
When a bearded dragon is feeling lethargic, it becomes weak and inactive. It is clear when bearded dragons are lethargic as they would usually settle over a specific spot and hardly moving.
Thus, it’s crucial to prevent your bearded dragon’s sand eating habits from causing it to become lethargic. If you were to notice your bearded dragon is eating sand, then it’s best to find alternatives for the sand substrate.
How to Prevent Your Bearded Dragon From Eating Sand?
Commonly, bearded dragon owners utilize sand as a substrate for the cage. However, the downside is that your bearded dragon is very likely to eat the sand and it doesn’t have any nutritious benefits.
Hence, it’s best to avoid your bearded dragon from eating sand. You can use some of these suggestions and ideas to put a stop to your bearded dragon’s habit of eating sand.
Change The Substrate
It is understandable why bearded dragon owners often build cages with sand substrate. This is mainly due to their bearded dragon’s natural environment.
In addition to that, a sand substrate is also more readily available. Nevertheless, if you do intend to change your bearded dragon’s cage substrate to something other than sand, then you need not look further than your common household items.
A convenient way to replace the sand substrate would be to use either newspapers or paper towels. However, with these 2 items, the need to constantly change is frequent.
This is down to the fact that it’s easily torn and would not be ideal for the long term. The more appropriate replacement for sand substrate would be commercial substrates.
Solid substrates like nonadhesive shelf liners that are found in stationery stores, slate tiles that can be bought from hardware stores, or reptile carpeting that can be purchased from a nearby pet store, can all be a good alternative to sand substrates.
Calcium Intake
As calcium deficiency is widely acknowledged as the main reason behind bearded dragons eating sand, it’s best to increase your bearded dragon’s daily calcium intake. This can be done by adding calcium-rich food to their diet or through supplements.
Although your bearded dragon’s favorite delicacy may be insects, it’s important to also include greens in its diet in an attempt to add to its calcium intake. In comparison to insects, fruits and vegetables contain a higher amount of calcium.
If your bearded dragon avoids or dislikes fruits and vegetables, then you could always trick it into eating the greens by gut loading the insects. In addition to that, you may also utilize calcium supplements to increase your bearded dragon’s calcium intake.
By providing your bearded dragon with sufficient amounts of calcium through its daily diet, you would essentially be eliminating the need for it to eat sand.
Eating Without Hunting
Another action that can be taken to prevent your bearded dragon from eating sand is by feeding it dead insects on a bowl. By doing this, your bearded dragon would not need to hunt its food.
Thus it reduces the chances of your bearded dragon accidentally eating sand stuck on its tongue. Furthermore, by serving your bearded dragon food through a bowl, you would also decrease the contact between its mouth and the sand.
Without the need to strike out its tongue to hunt or lick the food off the sand to eat, your bearded dragon will have no reason to accidentally eat sand. This would slowly eradicate your bearded dragon’s unintentional eating of sand.
Besides, the use of food bowls to feed your bearded dragon food is not an unusual practice. For years, bearded dragon owners have been using food bowls for feeding purposes.
The Difference In Commercial Sand and Natural Sand
In the wild, bearded dragons have been observed to eat sand and yet survive through the ordeal. However, bearded dragons in captivity suffer from health complications when it eats sand, why is that so?
This is simply due to the differences between the sand found in the wild and the sand used in captivity as a substrate for your bearded dragon’s enclosure.
It may both be sand but due to several factors, the difference in these 2 types of sand makes one edible and the other toxic for your bearded dragon.
Nutritients in the Sand
The sand found in a bearded dragon’s natural habitat is actually slightly nutritious in comparison to the zero nutrient sand substrate that you use for your bearded dragon’s cage. Naturally, the sand found in deserts contains some nutrients.
This makes it a good last resort meal for wild bearded dragons when it’s running low on nutrients needed by its body. In contrast, the sand substrates used commercially causes more harm than help if consumed by your bearded dragon.
This is made evident by the fact that sand in nature helps to grow plants. Even the sand in deserts comes in handy in growing trees like cactus, eucalyptus trees, and also the large mulga trees found in the Australian outback.
Whereas the sand substrate used domestically lacks this ability simply because it contains no minerals that can assist with the growth of a life. Hence this proves that it is indeed bad for your bearded dragon to eat sand substrates.
Weather
The sand found in nature is also much more fertile in comparison to the sand substrate used in captivity. Although in the desert, the sand in the wild still receives at least a few drops of rainfall throughout the year. IIn addition to that, there is also constant heat it gets from the uninterrupted sun rays.
Furthermore, the sand in the wild is also susceptible to changes in temperature due to seasonal weather. This makes it richer in minerals and when a bearded dragon chows on it, these minerals are passed on through its body.
On the other hand, the sand substrate you use domestically for your bearded dragon’s enclosure is not at all fertile. In fact, it is dry and stored in a controlled temperature environment for a long time. Due to this, the sand substrate becomes hazardous when consumed by your bearded dragon.
Food in the Sand
The sand in the wild is also a source of food for bearded dragons. In the wild, plants and animals are usually found on or hidden in dunes. Hence, when a bearded dragon is hunting its prey and eating it, it is unavoidable for it to also consume some sand.
In addition to that, due to other animals also living in the desert, it makes the sand move around more often. As animals die and begin decomposing on the sand, it also makes the sand richer in minerals.
So when a bearded dragon in the wild eats the sand, it’s also eating the remainder minerals from the dead animal or plant. Part of the mineral that is found in wild sand is calcium.
Hence it explains why your bearded dragon would chow on the sand when it’s lacking calcium from its diet. Due to the behavior passed down by its wild ancestors, your bearded dragon assumes that it could recover the required calcium through eating sand.
However, none of this applies to the sand substrates that are used at home for your bearded dragon. Unfortunately, the sand substrate used locally has no benefits what so ever for your bearded dragon. Instead, it causes unwanted health complications for your beardie.
Can You Use Wild Sand As A Substrate?
Although wild sand contains minerals that make it edible for bearded dragons, it is not practical to have it as a substrate for your pet bearded dragon’s cage. Wild sand is best functional as a last resort meal for bearded dragons only when it’s in the wild.
Unlike in the wild, the sand would not receive the alternating heat and raindrops in captivity. Furthermore, without any plants growing on it and animals or insects to pollinate it with seeds, the sand would not be able to maintain its fertile nature with minerals.
Besides, unless you allow some insect or animal corpses to be kept in the sand over long periods and put up with the smell that it comes with, you won’t be able to recreate the mineral-rich natural sand required for your bearded dragon.
Therefore, it will be ill-advised to try to recreate a natural setting with desert sand for your bearded dragon. Certain things can only be provided and maintained by nature. The best you could do is taking the necessary actions to prevent your bearded dragon from eating its sand substrates.
Conclusion
Bearded dragons would start chowing on sand mainly because they are lacking calcium in their body. Due to the high calcium demand required by their body and their natural instincts, bearded dragons have been conditioned to eat sand when it’s not getting sufficient calcium.
The best method to prevent your bearded dragon from eating sand is by changing its substrate from sand to a different alternative. However, if you would like to resume using sand substrates, then you will need to address the calcium deficiency issue your bearded dragon may be experiencing.
Although natural sand works well for wild bearded dragons, it loses its advantages when the sand is kept indoors at a constant temperature without other plants, insects, or animals on it.
Hence, do not waste your time and effort in trying to recreate the wild sand for your captive bearded dragon as it won’t be practical.
