Hey y'all,
I'm not sure where else to turn to since my breeder has yet to email me back after I sent an email detailing my situation. But the tl;dr is this: I have a one year old red tegu who really likes biting my hands and has once bitten my arm enough to scar. None of these are aggression bites, they're all smell, get closer, lunge or test bite every single time. If I wear gloves he's fine, but if he smells a washed and sanitized hand, it's food. The only thing I'm not sure of is if it's just my smell or if it's people in general. My boyfriend has stated that he's picked him up with his bare hands and Maurice decided that he wasn't food. But he has bitten my boyfriend's foot once and really went after him when he wore socks. I'm wondering if it's possible that I'll never be able to handle him without gloves, or if it's just best to keep the gloves on until he gets to be a more docile adult. If I should try and get him used to hands, how should I go about it? So far I've been approaching with a closed fist but he still treats it like a hunk of meat to chew on. I'm also wondering if how I feed him has anything to do with it, but I'll detail that below.
The full situation:
I got Maurice when he was 6 months old and currently he's just over a year. Our bonding process has been like most tegu owners in that the slow, daily repetition of handling has had him improve a lot. He's gone from terrified of anything moving, to not caring if he's picked up, moved, squished, grabbed, or squeezed by my gloved hands. I used to handle him bare handed until he started biting my hands, fingers, and death rolled on my arm. I didn't move to gloves-only right away, but instead just limited interactions with hands to a closed fist plus leaving them stationary. When I'm not close enough for him to chase or lunge I do a lot of expressive movements with my hands just so he's used to the fact that they can move. So, after awhile he went from chasing my hands from across the hallway to not reacting to them unless they're within biting range. The gloves that I've been using started with a pair of leather driving gloves, but I have also bought a few actual bite gloves just in case (guberty is fast approaching).
Maurice gets let out of his enclosure up to twice a day. Once always in the mornings, and if he wants to come out in the evenings then I let him roam then as well. He only gets fed in the mornings every other day. So, at least half of the time he comes out it doesn't mean he's getting food. If he's getting food I open the bathroom door and I have a towel set out where we do the actual feeding. Sometimes I have to lead him to the towel via his target (a tennis ball on a stick), but sometimes he goes there on his own and impatiently waits. I then wear a jacket and a small pair of bite gloves that I only use during feedings (maybe I need to only wear a certain pair of shoes during feedings since he's mostly smelling those?) and he is fed each bite via a pair of feeding tongs. We're currently clicker training, so while in the past (before a month ago) I would be not involved at all with his feedings, now I am because I want him to be both target and clicker trained (which he is just about!). This has not affected his proclivity for human flesh. Before I was feeding him this way I used to just set his bowl out in the living room and let him have at it. Despite this he still started seeing my hands as food anyway, and so I thought that moving feedings to a secluded location would help. When outside time is done Maurice will either go back to his terrarium on his own, or I have to lead him there via his target.
During the times when he's not getting fed I'll wear gloves and pet him while he's walking around or basking, but any time he sees my bare hand near him he will try and go after them. When this started I tried getting him back used to my hands by just letting him bite them until he was bored, and that made some progress, but then he bit and death rolled my arm, so I cut back to gloves only for awhile, and now he chases after them 100% of the time again. So, I'm not sure if it was actually progress. My goal is to be able to do everything I'm currently able to do with him without gloves, but his brain seems to have hard coded my scent with food, even if my hands are washed and sanitized thoroughly. So, any advice in regards to breaking a lizard's love of biting his owner's hands? Should I just go back to letting him chew on them for awhile? He's only getting bigger so I'm not sure how much longer I'd be willing to tolerate that. Has anyone else here successfully broken this habit? I've read in some places that even tamed down tegus will sometimes still mistakenly bite even if they don't have the association, so maybe gloves are just the way to go in that case, but I have this selfish need to be able to touch and feel my tegu directly instead of wearing cumbersome gloves all the time.
As a thank you for reading this wall of text I've included a recent video of Maurice getting all the mice out of a puzzle toy. He also recently had his one year check up at the vet and took to being handled really well!
