- If you've seen my videos before,
Stan is probably a familiar face,
but if you're new to the channel,
I guess he's not.
I got him a little over two years ago,
and he's between 12 and 13 years old now.
Like many of the animals that come here,
they come from people of all types,
some of which who are really good at caring for animals,
and others kind of struggle.
And Stan's owner definitely struggled.
A quick summary of his care:
he was on calci-sand
in, I think, a 20-gallon or maybe a 40-gallon,
eating just really cheap, generic bearded dragon pellets.
He had water, and that's about it.
He didn't really have much else.
And he survived like that for just about 10 years,
which is already impressive in itself.
So I've already done an update on him
for the one year point, like, mile marker,
and I've also done a couple other videos on him,
so there's plenty for you to see.
If you want to learn more about Stan
and more about how he's changed and stuff,
you can definitely go watch the playlist
just called "Stan," and there's probably, like,
an hour's worth of content of Stan.
But today,
for the two-year update on how he is doing,
I want to talk about
what my predictions were when I got him
and how these turned out.
Because I kind of had predictions
for one and a half to two years in the future
because I felt like I was experienced enough
with bearded dragons
to pretty much guess what would happen.
But, a spoiler: all of my predictions were wrong.
There's three main ones I want to cover.
The first is that Stan would be dead.
(death bell tolls) Bearded dragons...
I'd say the average beardie
probably does not live long at all.
Of course, the average,
you're taking every single beardie alive
and then finding the average.
I don't know how else to describe it.
So it's probably a bunch of beardies
only living for one to two years,
and then a bunch that are living much longer,
because they're either gonna be in really bad care
or pretty good care.
There really doesn't seem to be much
of a middle ground in general.
However, they are definitely hardy,
and some still break through and manage to survive.
In other words,
the actual lifespan of a beardie in captivity
is probably way lower than it would be
if everyone at least did some basic research
and figured out kind of what to do.
But for that reason, the average age is super low,
and we don't even know what it is,
because most people don't really document or mention
when their pet that they got from Petco died.
There's not really data on that.
So who knows?
I would say that for a healthy bearded dragon,
13 or 12 or so is certainly impressive,
but not unheard of.
But with Stan's condition,
I would consider this to be impressive,
and it just says how crazy resilient they can be,
how much their bodies just want to survive,
and how they'll do anything that they can to...
Is he alive? I'm pretty sure he's alive.
He hasn't moved this entire time, of course.
But they do anything they can
to keep their organs moving and stay alive.
Even if it means a lot of pain and suffering and stuff,
their bodies will go into survival mode
and do what it needs to do.
So yeah, I'll be honest, when I got him,
I thought maybe he had...
I probably would have said 6 to 12 months of good time left,
and then he'd either be just so old and kind of crippled
to where he might need to be euthanized,
or even just die himself.
And I think that's the reason I'm...
Everyone's kind of always joking how he's probably dead,
or how he's probably gonna die tomorrow.
It's gonna be awkward when he does die
because it won't be a joke anymore.
But I feel like he's just living
on extra time at this point,
and that's one of the great things about him.
My second prediction was
that he would be an extremely picky eater and only eat...
I think it was Zoo Med pellets he was being fed.
If you look at the ingredients, they're just not great,
in my opinion, for bearded dragons.
And that was all he was eating.
They were just brown, and...
I think they were feeding them to him dry?
But you're supposed to,
if you're gonna use them,
add water,
but I don't recommend using pellets for any lizards,
I don't think.
But that aside, it was super hard to get him to eat,
and he didn't eat for about two to three weeks with us,
which, with certain animals, that's kind of normal.
It's like, you get a lizard,
and it's kind of scared in its new environment.
It's not adjusted yet.
So food isn't its main priority,
because they can go super long without eating.
And Stan was like that,
and so I threw away the pellets,
and then I had to go buy more pellets.
But as you've seen in the first video that I got him,
he actually ended up eating immediately,
and I thought that it would be pellets,
but it was actually, I think, a Dubia roach.
And then it was tomatoes, of all things,
because tomatoes aren't even the best for them.
But he loves his tomatoes, as you may know, so.
That totally caught me off guard from the start,
because I was like,
"I'm gonna be have to buying, like,
Zoo Med pellets for this stupid bearded dragon forever,
'cause he's not gonna eat anything else.
Maybe he'll start nibbling on things
that look or smell similar."
But to my amazement, it just switched.
He started eating anything and everything after a while.
And I'd say now,
I don't even know if he has a favorite food,
he eats so much stuff.
It probably is still tomato, but he just likes...
Anything that makes it look
(rock music) like he's covered in blood,
whether it's tomatoes, raspberries, strawberries,
or bugs in general,
those seem to be his favorites.
And my third prediction with this small boy
is that his metabolic bone disease
would maybe stop getting worse,
but definitely not get better.
I just see metabolic bone disease
as an animal that improperly developed its bones,
usually due to... I mean, kinda always due to husbandry.
Either the diet side,
or, with bearded dragons,
possibly due to lighting.
So he probably didn't have UVB,
which is a type of light
that you hopefully normally use with them.
And if he has missing...
I'm so bad at explaining things.
And if he's missing nutrients from certain foods.
So I'm sure it was a mix,
because he only got pellets,
and I don't think he had UVB.
I think he had a heat lamp, but that was it.
It was just a light bulb that generates energy,
and that does not help his bones develop and build.
Whenever we got in animals with metabolic bone disease...
Which, it's super common, it's all the time.
Leopard geckos, crested geckos, even ball pythons.
Somehow. I don't know.
Sometimes it's just deformations,
but usually it's in lizards,
along with bearded dragons.
Turtles, as well. It can happen in their shell.
It's just basically deformed hard parts of their body.
I, whenever we have the animals,
we normally only have them for a few months
when we then sell them to someone new.
They never really seem to get much better over time,
and I kind of saw this as well.
You can stop it, but you can't really reverse it.
But Stan has also proved me wrong on this.
You can definitely tell,
he is still very awkwardly shaped,
and his bones and joints still don't work
quite like a normal bearded dragon.
But I can't discredit the fact
that he has actually managed to improve.
I've just had simple UV, just a UV tube, on him.
Switch it out every six or seven months or so.
And I have this heat light on him.
I use just the little halogen bulbs.
They get pretty hot in the spot, and he enjoys it.
I've actually seen changes.
He also has a pretty varied diet now.
With bugs, he gets mostly Dubias,
sometimes crickets, and sometimes mealworms.
But pretty much just Dubias for insects.
And then, veggies, he's got his collards.
He eats, like, anything now. It's so weird.
And then fruits and vegetables, all that stuff, so.
I think, even though he doesn't really grow much anymore...
Because, reptiles, they do grow
throughout their entire lives.
They're not like people,
where they stop growing and then eventually start shrinking.
They do always grow until the day they die.
But this slows extremely slowly,
to the point that you can't even tell that they're growing.
So I can't tell Stan grew at all.
But I think,
thanks to him still developing
and still growing just a little bit
and still shedding and stuff,
because he does still shed every few months or so...
That's actually been enough for the bones
to start to kind of repair themselves,
and almost get them into place.
I'm not a vet.
I have no college education in general.
So I can't really explain why that is.
Maybe some of you can in the comments.
But I'm impressed, and I'm not complaining, so.
Those are definitely my big three.
One, I thought he was dead.
Two, I thought he'd only eat pellets up until dying.
And then three,
I thought that he was stuck
in that awkward position forever,
and his mobility would not get any better.
The funny thing is, I thought if he did gain mobility,
he'd use it, but he actually moves less now.
He just is dormant in the same position.
Like, right now, he's actually kinda bloated,
because I put him just in his water bowl,
and then he drank a bunch of water,
so now he looks kind of like a balloon.
But he'll just sit literally in the same spot
for so long.
Even food. He'll just...
I'll put it in front of him. He eats it.
He doesn't even move.
He lifts his tail. He poops.
And then he just scoots his butt over two inches
so he doesn't sit in it,
and that's it.
That's all of his movement.
In some videos...
Like, say I'll film three videos in a week
and you see him in the same spot,
you might think I filmed all of them at the same time.
But no.
He just didn't move for seven days,
because he didn't feel the need to.
He got enough moisture from his food,
and I fed him in front of him, so.
The question is, should I make him be mobile?
I mean, I haven't really seen a need to.
He's still gotten better without doing so, but.
It's probably not a bad idea to get him to move.
He honestly just does not actually like
being handled that much, and of course, like,
probably the one time he enjoys it is gonna be right now.
So, yeah. Now he's actually pretty chill.
It's like he knows when the camera
is actually pointed on him,
and it's only when the camera is not...
When he's not the subject, that's when he has to go
berserk. (rock music)
Also, he's probably adjusting to the new home,
because this is a new place, new smells, and new views.
Because he is certainly an observer.
He definitely always knows what's going on around him.
I don't know if he knows what's going on around him,
but he sees what's going on around him,
and maybe he doesn't comprehend it, but.
I'll probably set him up behind me somewhere in the videos.
And that's the two-year update on Stan.
If you want to learn more about him
and more about the whole process,
check out the one-year update and the original video on him.
I think it's a really cool cycle to see through.
And you can check it all on the "Meet New Animals" playlist,
which I'll try to remember to link,
where you can see other cases like Stan
that are just not quite as popular.
But that'll be it for this video.
If you want to buy some merch,
still got some,
but I should put some new merch up.
I'll try and do that soon.
I need something to plug in a video.
Let's say the mailing list.
If you go to GoHerping.com or EmeraldScales.com,
you can add your name to the same mailing list.
It just passed 27,000 members,
and if you're on the mailing list,
you get updates when new animals are available,
when I'm taking in new animals,
when new unboxing videos are up,
and pretty much just any updates.
It's the best direct way to contact you.
But that'll be it for this video.
I'm Alex, and thanks for watching.
(slow chill music)