We all agree that despite being the cutest, calmest, and most docile of all the lizards, bearded dragons produce some pretty stinky poop.

However, what is so disgusting is that there are bearded dragons that munch these foul-smelling poop. As a beardie owner, it can be confusing to understand why your beardie would decide to savor its poop.

Some of the questions that linger in your mind when you see a beardie eating its poop include; is poop eating healthy? Why is the bearded dragon eating its poop? And is this a normal behavior?

This guide seeks to explain everything about poop eating in bearded dragons, including answering the questions above. Keep reading to know why your bearded dragon is feasting on its poop and whether it’s safe to eat defecates.

Why Is My Bearded Dragon Eating Its Poop?

First, the practice of animals eating their poop is known as coprophagy. Although this practice of eating their poop is not well researched and documented in bearded dragons, it’s something that many owners have confessed to having seen their pets do.

Coprophagia is a common practice throughout the animal kingdom. Animals such as dogs, rabbits, dung beetles, and chimps eat their poop.

However, bearded dragons are not inherently known to eat their poop. Seeing your bearded dragon engulf its excrements can be horrific, but these creatures must have a good reason to eat the stinky defecates.

Your bearded dragon can feast on its poop because of two reasons:

1. Presence of undigested food in the poop

2. Consumption of a diet that lacks essential vitamins & minerals

Let’s dissect every point independently, and maybe you’ll understand why your bearded dragon seems to be interested in its poop.

Presence of Undigested Food in the Poop

If your bearded dragon recognizes that there’s undigested food in its poop, there’s a high chance that it will try to exhaust all the nutrients by eating the poop.

Unlike humans, who are capable of noticing when food is wrapped in feces, bearded dragons will instinctively munch any food available in their enclosure, whether it is covered in poop or has been introduced into the cage.

It might be disgusting to witness such a thing, but beardies are wild animals adapted to doing anything to survive harsh conditions.

They will eat whatever is available to stay alive. Beardies often eat their poop when the food is taking too long or they have waited for days without being fed.

You might be asking what causes bearded dragons to pass undigested food, and these are the main reasons:

Overeating

If there’s something that bearded dragons love wholeheartedly, it’s their food. These creatures are capable of eating everything at their disposal. When these creatures are served too many insects per day, they will eat until they can’t digest everything in their guts. This means that some undigested pieces of insects will be present in the excrements. As soon as the beardie realizes this, they will start devouring the poop.

If the beardie is not in the right conditions to digest food

Sometimes, the conditions in the basking area and the beardie’s health may inhibit its ability to digest food. If a bearded dragon is suffering from a particular disease, it might not be able to digest the food it consumes.

Additionally, beardies must perform one essential ritual after feeding: basking. This is because UV light helps them digest food. If the enclosure’s basking area doesn’t provide the required light, the lizard won’t digest the food in the gastronomical system properly.

The feeding time

The time you feed your bearded dragon can also determine whether it will have undigested food in its poop or not. As a rule of the thumb, bearded dragons should be fed about 3 hours before the light bulbs are switched off. This will give them enough time to digest the food before they sleep.

If you give your beardie food 1 hour before turning off the lights, there’s a higher probability that they’ll go to bed with undigested food in their bellies. Once they’re awake, they will pass these undigested nutrients alongside the poop.

Consumption of a Diet Lacking Essential Minerals & Vitamins

By consuming its poop, your bearded dragon may be trying to pass a message that the food you’re giving it doesn’t have enough nutrients, vitamins, and minerals.

If your beardie isn’t getting enough minerals and vitamins, it will try to get them from other sources such as poop. Some even eat sand if it’s what you have used as substrate in their terrarium. If you catch your lizard eating its poop, you should check out whether you’re giving an adequate amount of:

• Calcium
• Insects
• Vegetables & greens

Research indicates that animals with a deficiency of a particular nutrient will try to find it from other sources. Ensure that your beardie is getting enough of these nutrients if you want it to cease munching its poop.

Calcium

Calcium is a vital element in the bearded dragon’s body. It helps bearded dragons grow strong and healthy bones. When beardies aren’t getting enough of this element, they start using the calcium reserve in the skeletal muscles.

Bearded dragons suffering from calcium deficiency will often try to suffice the gap by eating their poop. Pet owners should provide their beardies with calcium supplements to ensure that their body has enough calcium for growth and development.

Insects

Bearded dragons require protein to stay healthy and grow. The lizards get most of their proteins from insects. You should ensure that your beardies consume high-quality insects to get adequate amounts of proteins.

If you feed your bearded dragons with malnourished and low-quality insects, they might not get the right amount of protein they need. These will force them to turn to their poop to try and fill the gap.

Vegetables & Greens

Experts recommend that at least 25% of a bearded dragon’s diet be made of vegetables. These include greens such as mustard, dandelion, Turpin, kales, as well as fruits and other plant-based food. Vegetables and fruits are rich in nutrients as they supply vitamins and minerals such as calcium, zinc, phosphorus, and magnesium.   

Failure to give your beardies enough greens will lead to mineral and vitamin deficiencies, which the lizards will try to fix by eating their poop. 

Is It Healthy For Bearded Dragons to Eat Their Poop?

Now that we understand why bearded dragons eat their poop, let’s turn our attention to whether it’s safe and healthy for these creatures to eat their feces.

If your bearded dragon doesn’t consume poop regularly, it won’t be at risk of any health complications. However, the more your beardie eats its poop, the higher the chance that it could potentially end up having health problems.

Coprophagia may have long-term effects on your bearded dragon. Serious risks of letting your bearded dragon eat feces include:

Parasitic Infection

The most apparent risk of coprophagia is that beardies can ingest intestinal parasites and other pathogens. These parasites can cause severe complications once re-ingested. If your beardie has cuts in the mouth, the parasites and pathogens can cause potential infections.

Additionally, when the bearded dragon re-introduces parasites and pathogens that have already been excreted, it will magnify the existing problem.

To ensure that your beardie doesn’t ingest parasites and pathogens, you should disinfect feeding and watering bowls, maintain hygiene, and wash your hands before handling your bearded dragon.

Impaction

For bearded dragon enclosures that use loose substrates such as sand, the poop may collect sand particles once excreted from the body. Once the bearded dragon eats the poop and substrate, it might suffer from gut impaction.

As we all know, impaction is a severe condition that can lead to gut injury and even death if not addressed immediately. Therefore, coprophagia in a bearded dragon cage with a sand substrate can be dangerous to your pet, especially if it consumes its poop regularly.

Risk of Salmonella transmission to the Owner

Its common knowledge that most reptiles, such as lizards and turtles, carry the salmonella bacteria in their guts. Often, bearded dragon keepers can’t contract Salmonella since they clean up poop without touching it.

However, once your beardie starts eating its poop, it becomes relatively easy for bearded dragon owners to contract the bacteria. When eating its poop, some Salmonella bacteria might stick on the tongue or the mouth. If you’re the kind who let the beardie lick you or enjoy kissing them on the mouth, you can easily contract Salmonella.

Therefore, if your bearded dragon starts to eat its poop, you better ease up on the regular handling, and please avoid kissing the beloved beardie. Failure to do so, you might get Salmonella, which can cause severe diarrhea and even be fatal if not treated early.

Should I Forbid The Bearded Dragon From Eating Its Poop?

We recommend that you stop your bearded dragon from eating its poop. When you consider the ramification of coprophagy, it would be more sensible to stop your lizard from munching on its excrements.

To ascertain that your bearded dragon doesn’t get gut impaction, parasitic infections, or transmit Salmonella to you, stop it from eating its poop. You need to get rid of the poop from the bearded dragon’s enclosure as soon as possible.

How to Prevent a Bearded Dragon from Eating Own Poop?

You can do several things to prevent your bearded dragon from engaging in coprophagia. Try out these five tips:

1. Provide Your Beardies with a Balanced Diet

Your bearded dragon’s diet should contain 75% insects and 25% vegetables and fruits. Ensure that your lizards eat high-quality insects such as bugs and worms, and make sure you throw in greens like kales and dandelion. 

2. Calcium Supplements

Since bearded dragons need a lot of calcium, they can’t get it abundance from the regular food. This is why you should dust the bearded dragon food with calcium powder. Giving your beardies enough calcium ensures that they won’t look for it from alternative sources such as their poop.

3. Promptly Remove Poop From The Enclosure

The other way to get these lizards to stop eating poop is to clean excrements from the enclosure immediately. Train your bearded dragon to defecate in one area to ensure that cleaning poop isn’t a tedious or challenging exercise.

4. Don’t Put Live Insects in the Area Where The Bearded Dragon Defecates

Bearded dragons will quickly pick up the habit of poop eating if they are used to hunting insects in the defecating area. They might ingest the excrement by mistake at first but then return to eat the poop when there are no insects to hunt.

Nevertheless, you should contact your vet if your bearded dragon won’t stop eating its poop or when it starts showing odd signs after ingesting the poop. Exotic vets will offer insightful information to help you deal with poop-eating in bearded dragons. 

Are There Other Animals That Practice Coprophagia?

Although being coprophagic is not normal for bearded dragons, this is a natural phenomenon for some mammals and insects. In some creatures, poop eating happens during the early stages of development, while in others, it’s a long-life activity. Coprophagia is considered healthy and natural for these animals:

• Dogs
• Rabbits and hares
• Beetles
• Dung flies
• Foals
• Rats and mice.

Poop eating in these animals is more prevalent and has received in-depth research and medical coverage than in reptiles such as bearded dragons.

Do Wild Bearded Dragons Eat Their Poop?

Unfortunately, there isn’t much research about wild bearded dragons eating their poop. They might eat their poop for survival when they’re not getting enough nutrients, but the practice is not prevalent as in captivity. This is mainly because, in the wild, these creatures don’t defecate in an enclosed space where they have access anytime.

Wild animals are also said to have other brilliant ways to recycle and get nutrients, such as eating their shed and skin. However, not all bearded dragons, whether in the wild or captivity, eat their poop.

Final Thoughts

Bearded dragons indeed eat their poop. However, coprophagia is not natural to them. These lizards usually eat their poop because they lack proper nutrients in their diet or notice undigested food in the poop.

These lizards may stay active and remain healthy after consuming their poop, but continuous consumption can lead to the risk of parasitic infection and gut impaction. Conversely, when the creatures eat their fecal matter, they can easily spread Salmonella to their keepers.

However, bearded dragon owners can prevent their pets from eating their poop by giving them a balanced diet, supplementing their food with calcium powder, and getting rid of the fecal matter once they poop.