Bearded dragons behaviors like scratching the corner, digging, burrowing, panting, glass-surfing, head-bobbing, arm-waving, and playing dead are common in beardies.
Still, you must be wondering: Why does my bearded dragon scratch in the corner? Caged beardies can dig in the corner when gearing up for brumation or prepping a spot to lay their eggs. Then again, your beardie could be trying to find a more comfy spot away from the heat, bright light, disturbing noise, or any other presence that makes them uncomfortable or stressful.
Scratching is pretty common in bearded dragons, both in their natural and artificial habitats. It’s one of the commonest gestures the Australian lizard uses to communicate with other beardies as well as their owners.
Seven Reasons for Bearded Dragons to Scratch in the Corner and their Remedies
Your bearded dragon can scratch in the corner of their enclosure for any of the following reasons:
1. Preparation to Lay Eggs
Adult female bearded dragons aged between 8-12 months and beyond tend to lay eggs once per year. If your pet is female and is of age, they could be scratching in the corner in an attempt to prepare a decent, cozy, and safe spot to lay their eggs.
Gravid bearded dragons tend to scratch and dig frantically in the corner. Whether you’re female beardie has had a mating encounter with a male or not, she can still lay eggs. However, the eggs will be infertile in case she hasn’t mated.
The bearded dragons’ breeding season usually comes immediately after brumation. At this time, the lizards are especially active and ready to reproduce.
It’s recommended to ascertain the gender of your adult beardie as they’re often sexed wrongly in their infancy.
If you suspect or ascertain that your beardie pet is scratching in the corner in preparation for egg-laying, place a warm and cozy lay box at the middle of their tank.
Alternatively, provide them with a dig box so they can prep a decent spot to deposit their eggs.
If a female bearded dragon lacks a safe and comfortable place to lay her eggs, she could become egg-bound. This is an unfortunate situation that might require surgery to correct. Worse yet, it can be fatal.
2. Exceptionally High Tank Temperatures
Bearded dragons thrive best in hot climate such as their native home in the Australian desert. However, they have a natural way of thermoregulating even in hotter or colder regions and seasons.
Similarly, bearded dragons in captivity need optimal temperatures to survive. However, the lizards can hardly thermoregulate satisfactorily in captivity, so you must provide the right conditions.
Possibly one of the most crucial elements to watch is the temperatures inside the beardie’s tank.
Whenever the temperatures in the tank are too high, a pet bearded dragon relocates from the basking area to the cooling spot. On top of this, they’re likely to scratch, dig, and hide under rocks, logs, or loose substrate.
Scratching in the corner is most likely an indication that your beardie pet is extremely hot and their efforts to cool off are unsuccessful. If that’s the case, they’re simply trying to escape to a cooler place here they can thermoregulate better.
On top of this, you might observe accompanying symptoms including severe panting, hiding, and avoiding the basking area.
It’s worth noting that extremely high temperatures are fatal to bearded dragons. The extreme heat causes overheating, dehydration, stroke, and ultimately leads to death.
Fortunately, it’s easy to resolve temperature inconsistencies in the tank by adjusting the lighting and heating setups.
Typically, the temperatures in the basking area should stay between 92-110 degrees Fahrenheit (33-43 degrees Celsius).
Conversely, the cooling area should have temperatures ranging between 75-85 degrees Fahrenheit (23.8-29 degrees Celsius).
This temperature gradient is essential to allow your pet to cool off by shifting from the hot basking area to the cooling area.
On top of this, beardie experts recommend maintaining the tank temperatures in the 65-77 degrees Fahrenheit (18.3-25 degrees Celsius) range at night.
Monitoring and maintaining recommended optimal tank temperatures for your bearded dragons to thrive isn’t rocket science.
Simply position the lighting and heating arrangements correctly to supply the optimal levels of light and heat.
Besides, placing them at the recommended distances and angles helps to avoid beardie complications such as burns, eye injuries, and sleep interruption.
Further, using temperature thermometers helps to monitor and stick to the optimal temperature ranges in the tank.
However, digital stick-on thermometers and handheld infrared thermometer sets are considerably more accurate than the analog stick-on options.
3. Hunger Pangs
In their natural habitats, bearded dragons hunt live bugs and forage for other foods in the wild. However, you supply most of the nutrition for a pet beardie as they spend most of their time in their cage.
If your caged bearded dragon is scratching in their tank’s corner in search of food, there are two possible reasons for the behavior:
- You’re underfeeding your pet. Unlike adult beardies, baby, juvenile, and young bearded dragons are voracious eaters that require high supplies of proteins and vitamins for their fast-paced growth. If you don’t provide sufficient food rations, your pet lizard might resort to search for food by scratching in the corner and going around the enclosure.
- Addiction. Some types of feeder creepers such as fatty worms are highly addictive to bearded dragons. Nevertheless, their biggest downside is that they cause beardies to reject other live feeders and food types. Thus, your beardie could be scratching in their tank’s corner in search of that scrumptious type of worm after you cut back on its supply to correct their diet for a healthier life.
The best way to stop a beardie from scratching in their enclosure’s corner in search of food is by providing sufficient amounts of balanced diets at the right frequency.
Remember, young beardies require a frequent and constant supply of high amounts of proteins along with little vitamins to grow quickly to a full size.
On the other hand, adult beardies need more vitamins that proteins in their diet but eat relatively less frequently.
In the case of beardies that are addicted to certain foods, cutting back on that food’s provision is the best way to go.
On top of this, keep the pet on alternative healthy diets until they resume their normal feeding patterns.
Adult beardies can last between 1-2 months without food without any symptoms of weight-loss while baby beardies can’t stay long without food.
4. Insufficient Space
Bearded dragons naturally love exploring, burrowing, sightseeing, and scaling over objects. All these activities have multi-faceted intensions including exercise, fun, and searching for food.
When exploring, hunting, or relaxing, beardies engage in a lot of physical exercise and mental stimulation.
But there’s a catch- All these activities need plenty of space. Consider this: 40 gallons is the minimum recommended tank size for a lone adult bearded dragon.
Therefore, you need roughly 60-70 gallons of tank space to comfortably accommodate an adult beardie and their accessories.
Besides housing the bearded dragon and their accessories (hides decorations, toys, food, and light setups), the tank should have sufficient space for the pet to roam, bask, and sleep.
Moreover, the tank should have enough space to install UVB lights and create a temperature gradient for optimal thermoregulation.
5. High Stress Levels
Bearded dragons naturally live a solitary and territorial life. These behavioral traits extend to their cages where the lizards are extremely territorial of their tank and surroundings.
You can observe the show of dominance in the form of scratching, hissing, head-bobbing, or beard-puffing whenever other beardies, pets, or animals approach your beardie’s enclosure.
The presence of other beardies, pets, or creatures in or near the terrarium agitates your beardie pet. Moreover, beardies interpret their reflections as other bearded dragons.
Beyond this, they perceive the other animals as threats to their territory, thus instinctively react with shows of dominance or submission depending on how they perceive the visitor.
But possibly the worst thing about the presence of another beardie or creature inside or around your beardie’s tank is that it eventually leads to stress.
On top of this, numerous other situations can lead to stress in beardies including malnutrition, uncomfortably bright lights, egg-binding, infections and illness, unfavorable tank temperatures, and cramped space (small tanks).
Leaving live feeder insects to roam the tank freely can also stress out a pet bearded dragon. At worst, the bug might bite or infect your precious reptile.
Furthermore, using colored lights in the tank at night disrupts the pet’s sleep and might lead them to scratch in the corner in search of a hiding spot.
Besides scratching in their cage’s corner, stressed-out bearded dragons elicit a mix of other symptoms like disturbed dashing around the tank, excessive hiding, playing dead, and erratic glass-surfing.
For a bearded dragon to thrive in captivity, they require optimal artificial habitat conditions and first-rate husbandry.
Ensure they have sufficient space to eat, bask, roam, and hide. Further, supply the pets with the right amounts of correctly balanced diets at the recommended frequency for their age, size, and weight.
Don’t forget to house each of your bearded dragon pets in a separate tank.
In addition to preventing competition for precious resources like food, UVB light, hides, and basking spots, individual housing also help to keep agitation, fights, and injuries between beardies at bay.
Ultimately, this allows your pet to enjoy a stress-free, happier, and healthy life.
6. Preparation for Brumation
In their natural habitats in the wild, adult bearded dragons are known to undergo brumation through the colder winter seasons.
Brumation is the bearded dragon’s version of hibernation in mammals and it helps wild beards to survive the harsh cold months without losing precious body resources like fat, weight, and heat.
If you see your bearded dragon scratching in the corner as the cold season approaches, they could be gearing up for brumation.
Although they don’t always enter full-blown brumation, caged beardies might still scratch in the corner at the onset of the cold season as it’s an instinctive beardie response to their surroundings.
They’re simply trying to establish a warm, soft, comfortable, and peaceful spot to rest for the season. During brumation, a beardie sleeps most a lot (most of the time), eats little or nothing, doesn’t bask, and rarely roams.
Fortunately, brumation is a natural bearded dragon response to their environment, so it doesn’t have any adverse effects.
Your beardie won’t even lose any weight during this period. Possibly the worst thing about it is that you won’t be able to play with your pet lizard at this time.
However, infant, juvenile, and young bearded dragons shouldn’t undergo brumation. Their bodies grow at a fast pace to reach their full adult size within 8-12 months.
Before this stage, any substantial interruptions to their growth can have serious ramifications on their health in future.
Thus, provide ideal conditions to keep them active and visit a reptile pet veterinarian if you’re worried.
7. Lacking Enough Hides inside the Tank
We’ve already established that bearded dragons scratch and dig for a variety of reasons.
If it’s not for exercise, exhilaration, or food, you can chalk out the scratching as an instinctive response to a disturbing external element such as extreme heat, another beardie, disturbingly bright lights, or unfamiliar noises.
However, beardies mostly dash inside tunnels and burrows or hide under other hides in their artificial habitat.
Usually, they resort to scratching and digging in the corner only when there are no sufficient hides on the floor or when gearing up for brumation or egg-laying.
The only way to stop a beardie from scratching in the corner due to lack of hides in the tank is by upgrading their terrarium with sufficient hiding spots.
There are numerous options to choose from including branches, platforms, and store-bought rocks among others.
Beardies that spend lots of time in hiding will best enjoy and benefit from an open-top hide or hole that allows them to soak up UVB in hiding.
On the other hand, those that love the sights enjoy basking, sight-seeing, and hiding under logs or stones.
Additionally, supplying a small multi-layered soft-fabric blanket in the tank can help your pet to enjoy safer and cozier sleep. In turn, the pet is less likely to scratch in their cage’s corner.
Final Thoughts
Although scratching and digging constitute normal behavior for wild bearded dragons, scratching in the corner could be an indication that something is amiss with your beardie pet.
If they’re scratching in readiness for brumation or egg-laying, you have little to worry about. Placing a convenient laying box or dig box in the center of the tank is enough to resolve the issue.
However, you’ll need to review and adjust various tank settings such as size, temperature, humidity, location, and lighting arrangements if the scratching is a reaction to an eternal element.
Consider supplying your beardie with satisfactory and balanced nutrition in the right proportions and frequency to prevent them from scratching in search of food.
Moreover, maintaining the tank’s temperatures at the recommended optimum thresholds, supplying sufficient hides, and keeping your pet in a correctly-sized tank offers a pet beardie a comfortable, active, and healthy life.
Consequently, the lizards are less likely to scratch in the corner of their enclosure.
Remember to house your pets separately to avoid unnecessary agitation, fights, injuries, stress, and he possibility of untimely death.
Bearded dragons are extremely territorial lizards that thrive in solitude. Thus, they’re likely to fight and stress over simple reasons like space, food, and seeing another beardie near their tank.
