Nocturnal animals and UVB

yeaitsdave · Honored Member Joined: Sep 25, 2005 Posts: 261

Well I got into a discussion about whether or not nocturnal reptiles (leopard geckos specifically) still need UVB. I kinda feel that the animal will get some exposure to UVB in the wild even in the rare trips out during the day, so why not make the same effort in captivit?

Some of the people I work with are strongly opposed, so I figured that everyone here prolly has some opinion, so lets hear everyone's view.

TurtleTime · New Member Joined: Apr 17, 2006 Posts: 4

My wife and I subscribe to your view exactly. Plus it helps to keep the tank a little warmer and it cannot hurt anything (except your electric bill).

In all fairness though we only have 2 RESs and 2 Blizzard Geckos so we can direct all our resources at only 3 tanks. If you have a lot of pets (ie: many of tanks/lights/filters/ect) you may not have the luxury of being able to indulge them with "extras", in such instances lack of UVB will not be detrimental to the gecko.

Note: Adult Leopard geckos can become less nocturnal often adjusting to the schedules their human counterparts depending on when and how much the are handled and fed. In these cases the gecko will certainly benefit form the the UVB.

tupinambis · Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2006 10:00 pm Post subject:

The problem here is that too many people associate "nocturnal" with "never see's daylight", and this is incorrect. Nocturnal means that night time is when they are active, not that they never see sunlight. Now, some nocturnal animals do live in burrows or tree hollows and therefore likely don't get much UV exposure. However, a lot of nocturnal lizards are still hanging out and resting where they can get some indirect UV. There has been some research that shows even under full canopy cover, there is still some UV available that gets scattered/reflected off of leaves and branches.
A lot of the nocturnal lizards (primarily geckos) are very thin and delicately skinned, which helps facilitate utilizing any UV the animal may come across (similar to the theory of why some people from northern, predominantly foggy terrain tend to be very fair skinned with rosy cheeks, such as certain areas of Scotland). They don't need much exposure to get the benefits for proper health.
I still keep UV bulbs on my nocturnal lizards, but I usually don't put very strong bulbs on them. I think it's better to allow them to have access if they desire it, than to restrict their choices in case other sources might be deficient.