- Whether an animal is in pain or not
is usually a pretty absolute answer.
It's either in pain or it's not.
You get a dog that got hit by a car, it's whimpering.
Oh, it's in pain.
You got a cat that's just sitting there,
It's probably not in pain.
but sometimes it does get a little more complicated,
especially with certain species,
like pretty much any reptile.
And today I'll be talking about bearded dragons
using this girl as an example,
who came in recently.
I don't know much about her.
I just opened the box and here she was,
so it would have been a good un-boxing video,
but I thought it was just a normal bearded coming in,
And I got surprised with Stan 2.0,
who is my male bearded dragon,
who I've had for years,
and you've probably seen him.
In fact, millions of people have,
and with millions of people seeing an animal,
comes millions of opinions.
And when I show Stan,
there's a ton of different comments
about whether he's happy or sad,
if they even feel those emotions in the first place,
or if he's simply in pain or not,
and if he'd be better off being euthanized
or just, basically, not being alive at all.
And the same question comes up with this one.
So I will tell you a bit about my experiences with her,
so you can kind of develop your own opinion
and definitely leave a comment
because I'm curious to see the assortment
and what people, kind of, conclude
from seeing and hearing about her.
I'll also talk about how I've always tried
to determine whether a reptile specifically is in pain
and we'll go in detail with her.
So yeah, she came in a few weeks ago,
something like that.
Right off the bat, she looked really weird.
She was just kind of funny to look at.
She moves around really awkwardly
and she just doesn't look too happy.
She's got an awkward under bite,
her legs are just basically squished forwards,
her tail is just all wobbly all over the place.
She's looking at me like she's wishing she could just die.
But I don't know, maybe she's not wishing she could die.
Maybe she's wishing she could live another hundred years.
Who knows?
She's eating fine.
Drinking has been difficult.
So, what I've been doing
is I'm scared about giving her a deep bowl
or any bowl at all,
because I'm scared she's just gonna like climb in
and drown or something.
So, what I've been doing is every few days,
I just put her on a plate with water
because it just holds a little bit
and she just sits in like this lukewarm water
and then she can drink.
And she drinks pretty much every time,
which tells me she's probably not drinking any water
out of her dish
because she can't really get to it.
With bugs, I can just throw them on the table
while in her enclosure and she can eat those.
She can't really chase them around.
I can't give her, like, quick dubias or whatever,
but anything kind of slow
or like a vegetable,
like literally a vegetable,
not like an insect that's paralyzed,
but like an actual vegetable,
she can eat.
That's kind of all I know about her, I guess.
She basks and stuff. So.
But the main thing is figuring out
whether reptiles are in pain.
Usually the number one factor I use is stress.
And if a reptile is stressed,
there's a pretty likely chance it's in pain.
Of course, stress can just be a mental thing.
It can just be getting stressed out by its environment,
but it can also be physical.
And there's a handful of things that can tell you.
First off is not eating or drinking.
Drinking might just be, they simply can't get to their bowl.
Eating might just be the insects,
they can't be caught with this beardy, specifically.
But if you accommodate everything as easy as possible
and the animal is still is not eating or drinking,
it's probably stressed.
It's a normal thing,
happens with people too.
You don't eat while you're stressed
because you're going to be a bit more on edge.
You don't want something digesting in your stomach,
if you're in that fight or flight mode
where something's going to happen,
and that stress could be caused
by the physical pain they're experiencing.
Drinking, it could also literally be something
in their mouth.
Maybe when they bite food,
there's pain in their mouth
and they prefer the feeling of starvation
over the feeling of the pain in their mouth.
Same with drinking.
Maybe they have an open sore or something.
Maybe the cold water going past it
or getting into an open wound stings.
A lot like a person.
So even though they don't display the pain in the same ways,
they experience a lot of the same things we do.
If we have like a cavity
and we try to eat on it or something.
With beardies in particular, and some other reptiles,
they might not want a bask.
This could be, simply because they cannot get
to the basking spot
or because it's too painful to move,
and get to that spot
or too painful to move away from the basking
and they start overheating.
It could also be because basking often times means they're
out in the open.
If you're stressed out,
if you're in that fight or flight mode
and scared something might hurt you,
you're going to want to be hidden.
So they might prefer to be colder and hidden and stuff
over being able to actually bask.
Also not opening their eyes.
This can be different for different reptiles.
For example, chameleons,
it's one of the most common ways to tell if they're stressed
'cause they literally just keep their eyes closed,
but they could also,
say this bearded dragon wasn't opening her eyes,
maybe there's something actually wrong with her eyes.
Maybe they're clogged and there's fluids in them,
there's crust and infection or a cut or something,
but they could also just not be opening their eyes
the same way a chameleons or other animals do
because they're stressed.
I don't really know for sure if beardies do that.
So you can, I guess, tell me,
'cause I haven't really looked into that.
But a handful of animals do just that,
they don't open their eyes
if they're stressed out.
You can see now she's trying to walk.
She gave up.
Also opening their mouth.
Even though not opening their eyes
can say that they're stressed,
also opening their mouth, can.
We've had ball pythons come in, that...
Oh, she's moving now.
Look at her go.
Let's see if she can make to the end of the table,
before I finish my point.
We've had ball pythons come in
with respiratory infections
where they have literally so much fluid,
in like, their throat
that they're having trouble getting air
through that whole thing in their mouth.
I forgot what it's called off the top of my head.
But, basically they're having trouble breathing
and that obviously is going to cause some pain.
The constantly opening their mouth.
I've seen the same happen with lizards and other animals.
So it was just a little thing to throw in there.
And then of course,
two more obvious ones is that they're not moving.
Like if they never move.
Like Stan, my bearded dragon,
doesn't move very often, but he can when he needs to.
But if an animal literally is not moving
even to go get their food or water,
or something important,
or basking, or getting cooled off away from their basking.
Again, that's not always the case.
Like, I have a video called
my chubby frog did not move for one year
and that's true.
He wasn't in pain.
He just didn't have a reason to move.
He had his right temperature,
he was hydrated
and I would give him food right where he was.
So he literally didn't have a reason to,
but if animal has a reason to move
and they still don't,
that could be pain.
And the most obvious probably is literally just an open sore
or an open wound.
If you see blood,
if you see a cut,
kind of obvious,
I don't really need to go into detail there.
However, there can also be indirect pain
caused by something else.
So, say, the reason that I would guess she was in pain,
if she is, is because of her metabolic bone disease
and the way that her bones developed as she grew.
It's literally just so awkward,
it could physically be uncomfortable,
but that could also cause other things
that cause her pain.
So go back to starvation and dehydration.
If she literally can't get to her food or water,
starving is kind of painful.
Being extra thirsty, extra painful.
You get what I'm saying?
So, even though the metabolic bone disease
is not what's physically hurting her,
the indirect cause of her being hungry or thirsty
could actually be putting her in pain,
so you just gotta be aware of them.
Same with being hot or cold,
if they can or cannot get to and from their hot spot
or their cool area,
depending on the species,
from basking to not basking,
from being on their heat mat,
to being under a cool hide or something,
they could also not just be too hot or too cold,
or being uncomfortable because of that,
but they could literally have digestion issues.
Take certain geckos
that really need that nice warmth to properly digest food.
Sometimes leopard geckos might get impacted,
even though the food they're eating is totally safe,
they might not have the right temperatures
and so they physically have trouble
digesting the food properly
and it starts clogging them
and getting stuck in their intestines,
and it really just can't pass their stomach or whatever,
wherever it gets stuck. I don't know.
And so it can get pretty in detail,
not only are they being too hot or cold
because of this one issue,
just the lack of heat
or lack of proper temperatures
could mean that they're having internal problems
like digestion.
So yeah, it can be pretty hard to tell sometimes,
but that's something to keep in mind.
And then there's shedding.
This is probably the most common,
but also the easiest to fix.
Say this bearded dragon,
say she was covered in stuck shed.
Beardies do shed, like pretty much every other reptile
and most animals shed,
but beardies, they normally just eat their shed,
and she does not have any stuck shed on her.
I don't know if that means
the previous owner had to help her
or that she was able to shed herself
because she hasn't been here long enough
for me to see her shed.
Because even though she's grown up
and probably done growing,
she'll still continue to shed throughout her life,
just a bit less often because they still keep growing
just very slowly.
But, say she had like a big chunk of stuck shed on her leg
or something and she can never get that off,
that could show maybe she physically can't get to it,
maybe it's painful for her to try and get to it
and remove it.
And the shed itself can cause pain.
How many times have I said pain in this video?
I don't know.
But, basically wrap a rubber band
around your wrist multiple times,
and then your hand turns purple,
that can happen with bearded dragons
and pretty much any reptile.
I see it most commonly with ball pythons
on the tip of their tails.
They'll shed off all of their shed
and then that little tiny inch of shed is still stuck
on the end of their tail.
And it actually,
I didn't even notice,
it happened with her.
Her tail is completely stubby
because, this normally happens,
sometimes, because they were housed with another animal
that, like, bit it off.
But with her, it was most likely
she had stuck shed on the end,
it constricts her tail
to the point that it loses blood flow,
the end of the tail dies and falls off.
So once it falls off, it's probably not very painful.
It looks like this healed up very well.
But, if it's actively in the process,
it's not gonna be comfortable.
And I can only assume that similar
to cutting off your own blood flow
and how it gets really uncomfortable.
Just imagine that,
until your hand falls off.
Or not.
You don't have to imagine it.
That sounds kind of painful.
So the end question: is she in pain?
Right now,
I honestly don't know what to say.
She's breathing kind of hard.
I think she's just so tired from moving this very tiny bit.
If I compared her to Stan,
she hasn't been here that long,
so I don't want them to be, like, too close to each other.
And also who knows how they'd react to each other.
Probably very badly.
I don't want to do that.
I would guess that she is in more pain on the scale
than Stan is.
If zero to 10 pain scale,
10 is excruciating,
zero is no pain at all,
let's just put Stan at a five
because I truly don't know what he is.
A two... like if a normal beardie is a zero,
well, let's say Stan is a five,
I put her at like a nine in comparison.
I don't know.
She just has a lot of trouble moving.
It's a really rough to say,
like, who knows how old she is.
I'll try and find the information.
I really can't find any info on her.
Who knows how long she's been like this?
Who knows if she's adapted,
but when it comes to pain,
it looks like she definitely experiences it more
than other beardies.
Definitely leave your opinions
and below I'll check out the comments.
And I'll keep on watching her.
If she really does seem to get bad,
I can always consider,
I mean, euthanasia's always an option.
I don't expect to euthanize her.
I highly doubt it.
I've never had to do it for an animal
simply being straight in pain.
And I don't think it's likely,
but I think it's always good to be open to different ideas.
So, it's just kind of annoying that I can't tell for sure.
So I highly doubt
that she would have to someday be euthanized.
I do believe that with the proper conditions,
if she's under them long enough,
she could get a little better,
she can be a bit more comfortable,
but yeah, at the same time,
people have said that Stan should be euthanized
for over two years.
And I still haven't.
Some people say that that's abuse in doing that.
Other people say it would be abuse
to euthanize him now or two years ago.
So it's all over the place.
It's pretty rough to say.
And that's that.
This is Stanetta.
Stan 2.0.
I think I'll do, maybe, one or two videos on her.
'Cause I've got a few ideas,
but that's that.
So it's probably not the last you'll see of her.
If I determine that all is well enough,
I would like to build or re-home her
and find someone that's willing to give her a lot of time.
But that's it for this video.
So I'm Alex and thanks for watching.
(relaxed jazz music)