# Thorny devils



## Joker (Oct 22, 2007)

Just wondering if anybody keeps these, what sort of setup & temps do they need & how active are they, they look like a very cool lizard


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## Jen (Oct 22, 2007)

I asked this ages ago, not many people keep them cause all they eat are tiny black ants and they are too hard to collect. there is some info in previous threads tho that is worth looking at. I thought they were cool too (still do)


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## method (Oct 22, 2007)

There was a thread a bout this not long ago, i think the general say was if you cant provide a billion ants for it a day  you cant keep the lil suckers


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## Southside Morelia (Oct 22, 2007)

Do a search, there have been a few posts that I know of, that will answer your questions...
In short, no one sells them as they are a specialist feeder that only eats ants (and plenty of them) of a specific species, too hard to keep!
Cheers....
PS. There is probaly someone out there besides zoo's that keep them, but I know of none...


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## Southside Morelia (Oct 22, 2007)

OMG, you gotta be quick, I thought I was the only one replying here...LMAO :lol:


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## Armand (Oct 22, 2007)

when we went to Uluru (ayers rock) we went on a repile course thing (just our family lucky enough) and they said that they are the one of the most hard-to-keep reptiles in the world.. less than 100 people (estimated) keep them worldwide.. as we heard from the guid. not the best reptile to keep even though they are so beautiful..


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## waruikazi (Oct 22, 2007)

Are they even legal to keep? I mean are there any on permit atm or not?


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## Armand (Oct 22, 2007)

haha i dont even think they are legal in QL lol


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## Southside Morelia (Oct 22, 2007)

waruikazi said:


> Are they even legal to keep? I mean are there any on permit atm or not?


I don't think so...


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## Jen (Oct 22, 2007)

Do they have another name? I can't find them on the parks list


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## Shano92 (Oct 22, 2007)

a while ago at a pet expo i saw that they had one, dont now how they suply hundreds of ants for them a day.


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## Joker (Oct 22, 2007)

Thanks guys & gals for the replys, spewin i'll have to put this one in the to hard basket & the to dear basket.


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## Jonno from ERD (Oct 22, 2007)

There are actually several people who keep them from all over Australia, both within their natural territory and out of it. They need a consistent supply of thousands of ants regularly, but other than that their husbandry is apparently fairly straight forward. There have been a few captive breedings and there was a whisper that some may be offered for sale this year.


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## Hickson (Oct 23, 2007)

In one of the other discussions it was reported that they sold for about $5000 a pair (I think). Most zoos outside their range won't even bother trying to keep them.



Hix


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## addy (Oct 23, 2007)

You know, Ant farms are not hard to look after. Ants can live off a simple diet of a wet cloth, the jelly found in dog food and aeroplane jelly. Having an ant farm big enough to produce that kind of volume per day! i estimate you'd need the queen ant (some ant farms operate without the queen) and a 6ft tank. And you'd need to constantly be taking the ants from the farm to the thorny devils enclosure. Or just put the thorny devil in the ant farm.

Thats alot of effort for a lizard that might have cost you 5k to begin with. There has to be some kind of supliment for thorny devils, or someone is selling ants by the thousand. Maybe you should ask the zoo.


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## scorps (Oct 23, 2007)

they have had babies eating crix and mealies but they all endd up dying


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## addy (Oct 23, 2007)

Oh. thats sad...you know there are warnings about feeding meal worms to baby dragon lizards. That might be a similar case to thorny devils. I hope they didn't cost you an arm and a leg

That is sad. When my fist baby blue tounge died i cried for like 10 minutes. i was only 10 years old though.


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## jonesc1 (Oct 23, 2007)

Perhaps if you had a pit style enclosure, half a rainwater tank for instance, with a deep sand substrate, establish a colony of ants in the enclosure first, then when the colony is large enough introduce the molochs. You would have to make sure that the ant colony was sustainable considering a large number would be eaten per day. I doubt it would be impossible to keep them outside of their natural range no matter how difficult it may be. I just think their biology/captive requirements havent fully been investigated yet.


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## brigo (Oct 23, 2007)

I was purchasing a few reps a few years back with my mum, and the guy i was purchasing off had a few thorny devils there..

He said they were $350 each and were all males.

Back then i thought maybe he kept them or sold them on a special permit or something ? Anyways, they were so beautiful although i wouldnt of bought one even if it was legal, since he told me i have to supply it with so many ants, and its their primary food, it not the only food that they eat.

Does anybody actually know what permit people keep them on? Id be interested to know how they feed them!


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## Moreliaman (Oct 24, 2007)

I did hear about 1 person trying to develop a formic acid substitute in a spray, so you just sprayed any small crickets & feed, no idea if anything came of it


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## Colin (Oct 24, 2007)

I've always been interested if it would be possible scenting pinkies and or crickets with crushed black ants and get young thorny devils to take them. It would be much easier if they could be weaned onto food sources that are more accessable to the average keeper if thats even possible at all? 

Be a long process though I imagine :lol:



Moreliaman said:


> I did hear about 1 person trying to develop a formic acid substitute in a spray, so you just sprayed any small crickets & feed, no idea if anything came of it



just saw your post moreliaman. interesting stuff.


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## levis04 (Oct 24, 2007)

thorny devils are very easy to look after and breed in captivity, as long as you have theants. if they occur around you area then you should have the right ants. i have a very good friend that breeds a heap every year i think he might be putting them up for sale this year, to keep a constant supply of ants he runs dog food and honey through a dripper hose, that starts where the ants are and runs through most of his enclosures. there was a good article in one of the latest reptile aus mags by the reptile centre or desert park on them. they are better kept outside in pits. the best thing about the thornys is if you have the ants they will look after them selves.


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## fuegan13 (Oct 24, 2007)

slightly off topic..... but is there anyway to get a queen ant besides digging up an ant nest ? and is digging up ants nests legal anyway ? 
like do people sell them or anything >??? 

(no im not looking to get a thorny devil even thou they are extremly cool..... )


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## Hickson (Oct 24, 2007)

Colin said:


> I've always been interested if it would be possible scenting pinkies and or crickets with crushed black ants and get young thorny devils to take them.



If you could get them eating pinkies they would end up being very sick lizards. Their diet now consists primarily of chitin, the exoskeleton of the ants. Pinkies have almost no chitin in any form on them.

Keeping, breeding and feeding have all been discussed in previous threads, including a trio that was kept in North Sydney for a few years. Do a search on the word Moloch.



Hix


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## addy (Oct 25, 2007)

fuegan13 said:


> slightly off topic..... but is there anyway to get a queen ant besides digging up an ant nest ? and is digging up ants nests legal anyway ?
> like do people sell them or anything >???
> 
> (no im not looking to get a thorny devil even thou they are extremly cool..... )




Yes there is. At certain times of year, and perhaps less often than every year, ants will gather around their nest in massive number. They will release about a thousand prospective queen ants. 
They appear slighly diffrent from the regular ant depending on the species. But these ants will have wings. They will all fly off in their own direction and about 99.9% will fall victim to spiders, dragon flies, starvation and other predators. The idea is that they will form their own colony of ants. 
If you capture one of these winged ants, and it survives..there you go,,a queen ant.. 

No idea what you have to do to get it started. If she just starts laying eggs by herself or if she needs to make contact with another ant, i don't know. I've never tried it.


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## PhilK (Oct 25, 2007)

She needs a male drone ant. That's hard to come by. Veerryy hard.


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## dragons75 (Oct 25, 2007)

Is chitin the same exo skeleton mealies have ? If so you could possibly feed on mealies if you either used there skin after shedding or chopped them up finely enough. And yeah i wish i had some too


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## jonesc1 (Oct 25, 2007)

PhilK said:


> She needs a male drone ant. That's hard to come by. Veerryy hard.



If they're like bees, which im fairly sure they are, if the queen doesn't mate she will lay unfertilised eggs. These eggs will develop into males, drones, which she will then mate with. She will then lay fertilised eggs which develop into the workers. So in theory a single queen would be able to start a new colony.


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## grimbeny (Oct 25, 2007)

Really a female could lay unfertilised eggs that develope into males, very interesting becaus usually when this occurs you get clones of the parent ie more females. The whole queen scenario is very unusual and interesting though. I wonder what the difference is when the queen decides to release all the females and who mates whith her to produce them as opposed to normally when she only produces drones and workers and the like.


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## $NaKe PiMp (Oct 26, 2007)

i have heard that at a zoo in alice springs they use wood with holes drilled in it and put honey
in the holes then putthe wood where there are ants are they go into al the holes to get honey then thy bring the wood into enclosure and the molochs eat the ants!!


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## hazzard (Oct 26, 2007)

jonesc1 said:


> If they're like bees, which im fairly sure they are, if the queen doesn't mate she will lay unfertilised eggs. These eggs will develop into males, drones, which she will then mate with. She will then lay fertilised eggs which develop into the workers. So in theory a single queen would be able to start a new colony.




Close but so far away!

In honeybees
Queens produce unfertilised eggs if unmated known as drones by pathenogenesis. These develop into males which can then fly into the sky and mate with virgin queens. A queen that has started laying unfertilised eggs will never then go out and mate. It's just a survival mechanism to get some part of it's genetics into the next generation. Colonies that have drone laying queens simply die out! Queen bees can only mate in the sky not in there colony!

On top of this you would need workers to feed and rear the larvae into drones as the queen does not have developed hypopharangeal glands to be able to do this. Simply a honeybee colony cannot be produced from a single queen.



Workers can similarly develop ovaries (in the presence of no queens) and develop drone offspring which can the go and mate with queens.


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## Vincent (Oct 26, 2007)

I saw one recently in Melbourne that was living on baby crickets. It was going very well on them. At the time i was there, it had only been in captivity for a couple of months ( I think ), and had been fed only baby crickets. Interesting to see how it goes on them long term.


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## expansa1 (Oct 26, 2007)

I think they're awesome lizards as well. As mentioned, all you need is a few colonies of ants on your property and you're sweet!


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## bump73 (Oct 26, 2007)

Expansa. is that yours?

If so how do you actually collect the ants??
Ben


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## Hickson (Oct 26, 2007)

PiMp said:


> i have heard that at a zoo in alice springs they use wood with holes drilled in it and put honey
> in the holes then putthe wood where there are ants are they go into al the holes to get honey then thy bring the wood into enclosure and the molochs eat the ants!!



The Alice Springs Desert Park uses old bits of termite mound drizzled with honey - works a treat! In outdoor enclosures they just put the honey on the ground, and the moloch stands beside the ant trail feeding on the moving buffet.



Hix


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## wokka (Oct 26, 2007)

Ants arn't ants. Apparently of the 400 different types of ants in Australia thorny devils eat 12 types.


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## mattmc (Oct 26, 2007)

expansa is that yours. DUDE they are cool as. 1 of my fav reps


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## expansa1 (Oct 26, 2007)

expansa1 said:


> I think they're awesome lizards as well. As mentioned, all you need is a few colonies of ants on your property and you're sweet!




Was for a while. We have a lot of black ants on our property but not enough during winter and the wet season.


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## Moreliaman (Oct 26, 2007)

Im sure you could got out and get a mated queen specie of ant that the devil eats, i know all ants arent the same, but there must be one of the species that (like ant colonies over here do) have yearly swarms to expand, producing hundreds of winged queens an winged drones that fly out of the nest, when the female has been mated her wings fall off & then you catch her up & start your ant colony.
Im sure its allot of effort, i couldnt imagine anyone having much free time looking after these guys.


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## geckodan (Oct 26, 2007)

An associate of mine has bred them to second generation in outdoor pits using nothing more than a chicken drumstick once a week in a wire cage to attract ants into the enclosure. Despite what has been written about them "requiring" an ant trail and a reluctance to chase individual ants, they spent as much time patrolling the perimeter of the pit (which had a wire mesh floor) picking off individual ants attracted to the food source. They were by far the easiest species he has kept BUT he had an appropriate ant species living locally.


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## Moreliaman (Oct 27, 2007)

If i remember correctly thats what one the last threads on this species concluded, in a pit outside where you can provide ants all year round.
Your friends a lucky person dan, what area of Australia does he live in?


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## geckodan (Oct 27, 2007)

Moreliaman said:


> If i remember correctly thats what one the last threads on this species concluded, in a pit outside where you can provide ants all year round.
> Your friends a lucky person dan, what area of Australia does he live in?



Central QLD


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## Jonno from ERD (Oct 27, 2007)

I know of atleast two people in South East Queensland keeping them in indoor enclosures. They haven't had any breeding success that I know of, but it seems to be feasible. They are a species that I would sell my soul to be able to keep but are way too maintanence intensive for us.


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## Moreliaman (Oct 28, 2007)

Jonno from ERD said:


> I know of atleast two people in South East Queensland keeping them in indoor enclosures. They haven't had any breeding success that I know of, but it seems to be feasible. They are a species that I would sell my soul to be able to keep but are way too maintanence intensive for us.


 
That sounds interesting Jonno, do they have the ants inside too ? or keep them going outside and just collect when needed ?


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## lanceinator (Oct 28, 2007)

Last Easter we had a driving holiday to Ayres Rock where we got to see Devils in their natural environment. Unfortunately most of the Devils I saw were road kill..... We found about thirty of them on the road, but about twenty of them were already dead..... we managed to save and reloacate about nine of them off the road however there was one poor little feller where I couldn't turn the cruiser around quick enough and met his maker right in front of us when a car travlling in the opposite direction went stright over the top of him...... The kids (and I) were devistated.
I too would love to keep these little gems and intend to one day..... However I'd like to get a little more time up as a herper before I take on something so challenging..... I did speak to a bloke who used to keep a pair in his bedroom for two years..... He said that he used to have a coke can (with a little bit of coke still in it!) on his window sill which attracted the ants.

Cheers

Ps. Check out the shirt on my little apprentice (son) was wearing on the day!!!!!


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## Hickson (Oct 29, 2007)

That second photo is a ripper Lanceinator!



Hix


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## WombleHerp (Oct 29, 2007)

thats awesome! i want to see some of them  thanks for sharing!


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## Riley (Oct 29, 2007)

my gallery has my pic..from the reptile show


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