The Safe Cohabitation of Crested Geckos
(The Cohabbing Myth Officially Busted)

by Anthony Caponetto - Updated/Softened :-) 2026

An Introduction
This resource page discusses the safe cohabitation of Crested Geckos, a practice that used to be standard operating procedure for literally everyone, but is now suddenly treated as a practice that's unsafe, if not unethical - at least that's the story according to a bunch of experts who've very clearly never tried it.  

Today, there are otherwise intelligent-sounding breeders who truly, honestly believe (and tell everyone they meet) that crested geckos are territorial and solitary creatures and that it's not safe or wise to house them together.  All things I can assure you are completely untrue.  I initially minded my business, but eventually started having my integrity/ethics challenged on social media for talking about keeping geckos in groups.  Rather than hiding it (like most people do) or  giving the social media experts the argument they're looking for, I decided to put this page up for everyone to reference - and hopefully we can soon put this silly non-issue to rest.

The myth that you can't safely house crested geckos together (aka "cohabbing" as they call it) is nothing more than a viral misconception, and something I feel takes a lot of the fun out keeping one of very few species where cohabitation is not only safe, but can be more interesting, rewarding and advantageous - especially for kids or those wanting to breed geckos on a smaller scale.  By housing geckos together, you'll have a more complete learning experience of their natural behavior and biology.

If housing ciliatus in groups was inherently dangerous or causing regular injuries (however minor), it wouldn't still be standard procedure here. I would have noted a pattern long ago, and we wouldn't still be doing it 20-some years later.  We keep geckos of all sizes in groups and we keep geckos of all sizes individually as well - both ways have their place in our collection and both probably will in most other serious collections.  Even at our scale, injuries caused by cagemates are almost unheard of.

As a breeder who has personally hatched and shipped 250,000+ crested geckos over the years, I have a sense of a responsibility to my customers, and to the crested gecko community at large, to give them not only a straight answer about this, but tell them what I know about doing it safely.

Housing Crested Geckos Together Safely

Crested geckos are one of few species you'll ever hear me tell you is perfectly safe to keep in groups.  There aren't very many things you need to worry about, but here are a few quick guidelines we follow:

Introduction Protocol
A) Always Start with a Clean Cage
When introducing a new breeding group or pair, all geckos are put into a clean cage at the same time.  The clean cage is important because that makes it neutral territory.  No one's scents are going to be present in the cage, which helps to eliminate any sort of territorial behavior you might (maybe) see if you were to introduce a gecko into an existing cage with a gecko already living in it.  Whatever the dynamic is, if there's another gecko or geckos already living in the cage, a full cleaning is something we strongly prefer to do.  They're going to breed and you want it to go smoothly - anything you can do to prevent issues is worth the effort.

B) Leave them alone, but listen for trouble.
We never introduce geckos within a couple hours of when we're going home for the day.  It's important to hang around an keep the music quiet enough that you can hear it if the breeding activity gets too rough.  This is usually something we only see the first time a group is paired up - why that is, I'm not sure, but you almost never see males aggressively chasing females after the initial introduction.  

If the male is holding the female with his mouth in order to breed her that's normal, even if she's vocalizing.  However, if they're biting each other, doing crocodile death rolls or shaking their head like a dog while they bite, that's when it's time to break it up and try again tomorrow.  I've set up over 5,000 breeders over the years and I've only had to break up a fight a few times - it's not normally a problem and even if it happens, they're highly unlikely to be seriously injured, so don't let it freak you out. 

Keep Similar Sizes from Hatchling to Subadults
A major key here is keeping sizes similar by frequent regrouping (every time we clean for us). While nothing is ever maintenance free, it's still less maintenance than housing them individually.  We try to ensure every cleaning that we're keeping geckos of the same size in an enclosure together.  This is important with young, growing geckos and often times might mean you'll need to regroup geckos several times as they grow.

(Almost) Never House Mature Males Together
Males that show a hemipenile bulge that were not raised together will usually fight like two bulldogs in a cartoon, rolling around, making noises and BITING the whole time. And it often starts upon first sight of one another - no sizing each other up, no warnings - they will get straight to business.  I. won't even put two males in the same holding container for 30 seconds, if that tells you what a difference it makes. 

Almost, you say?  Yeah, so here's where it gets interesting. Mature, breeder male crested geckos that have been housed together since BEFORE puberty (bulge appearing) will almost never fight.  I say almost because I don't want someone to blame me if their gecko gets beat up, but I've honestly never seen it happen.  This is even true if your workers accidentally put mature females in the cage with them...not something I tried to learn, but interesting nonetheless.   It's nothing short of remarkable to me just how well these males seem to be able to identify one another.  They instantly know not to fight, whereas unfamiliar males will skip the trash talk entirely and get after it like two alpha dogs. 

Breeding Pairs/Groups
Size discrepancies can be a bit wider with adult groups, but it's still always smart to watch them or be within earshot for the first several hours a pair or group is introduced.  If you're going to see a cage bully in an adult group, it's usually going to be the largest female - though most of the time, even relatively huge girls are gentle with everyone and there's not a problem.

I currently have several thousand breeding geckos housed in groups of 1.2 to 1.4 (that's 1 male with 2 to 4 females) and the incidence of fighting or injury is almost non-existent. We might see 1 or 2 minor injuries some years, and some years there are none.  If I were to go through during the day and open 100 breeder enclosures at random, I would probably find piles of geckos sleeping on top of one another in 95 or more of them.

Our breeder males are left in the cages year-round.  Contrary to internet lore, they don't run around trying to mate with the females all year round, all day long.  Breeding activity is signaled by hormones.  When females aren't receptive or in-season, they won't put off the pheromones to entice the male.

Another thing to note - when crested geckos breed, the male often bites the back of the female's head in order to get things lined up, down at the other end.  This may look rough, or like he's attacking her, but (newsflash) they are wild animals and that is how it's done at times. 

You don't need to separate breeders in the off-season.
I can't say this any more clearly - it is a complete misnomer that male crested geckos will harass females to breed with them constantly, year round.  Separating geckos will hurt production and can throw off the timing of your seasons.

We keep breeding pairs/groups together year-round.  Trying to guess when it's time for them to breed starts putting certain aspects out of your control - and now you're doing guesswork.  Effective selective breeding takes consistency, and consistency isn't really a thing when you're guessing about the hormonal cycles of dozens or hundreds or thousands of momma geckos.  We leave them together year-round and allow them to breed on a natural cycle, dictated by hormones and pheromones that tell the male when it's time (and when it's not).
 

When NOT to House Multiple Geckos Together

Remember, this page is here to inform you and help you make sound decision for you and your geckos, not to tell you group housing is better or that's how it should always be done.  As such, here are some scenarios where I will almost always choose to house geckos individually.  Your mileage may vary, but anything housed individually in my collection usually falls into one of these three categories.

1. When it's vital to keep close track of genetics/lineage.
Non-visual (recessive) hets and more subtle genes are good examples of this.  (Conversely, genes that are easy to identify, visually, can be housed in groups without issue.)

2. When we need that gecko to be breeding size as soon as possible. 
Very rarely does it make that big of a difference, but my personal excitement level is almost always what dictates how soon I "need" that to happen.  With geckos from hatchling to subadult sizes, you will see better rate of growth - maybe even an unnatural rate of growth - when they're housed alone.  For geckos I want to grow out fast, that's the way we do it - but there's no way we could do that with everything, as there is quite a large trade-off in terms of efficiency - including time and money...you're doing more work and spending more money - making more cups of food, more cleaning or replacing water bowls, cleaning more enclosures, you're spending more time on everything and this all takes up more space.

For a lot of breeders, and most hobbyists, it's not going to be worth raising them ALL individually.  In all reality, captive geckos raised in groups are still going to grow much faster than they ever would in the wild, so you're not hurting them by letting them grow at a more natural pace...but if you want turbocharged growth, individual housing is king.

3. When a young gecko isn't fully thriving.
If a gecko seems to be overly shy, stressed, not eating well, recovering from stress, rapidly falling behind the group in rate of growth or anything of that nature, it's almost always best to house those geckos individually.  Anything keeping a gecko from thriving can almost always be overcome faster by housing it alone, at least until it's thriving. The little shy guys like that can certainly take a while to catch up, but ours will still get huge if given the proper conditions.  If you wonder why I specified "young" geckos, it's because this is almost never going to be a thing with older, established geckos.

The Anti-Cohabbing Argument

What is this "cohabbing" myth and why is this now a bad thing?
The myth, as it relates to housing crested geckos, is that the species is solitary and territorial - and therefore should be housed alone.  Housing them in a group would be cohabbing and that's dangerous - according to legend, anyway. 

Where it gets funny is when someone like me comes along and asks these people to explain what can happen if I do.  They'll use lines like "just because it works for someone else" or "cohabbing works until it doesn't"...wise-sounding, but it's anecdotal nonsense without the real-world experience to back up whatever it is that they want you to believe.

Crested geckos are going to do what crested geckos do, regardless of the house they're living in or how long you keep them (it's been nearly a quarter century for me and "cohabbing" still works).  When sizes are kept similar with young/growing geckos, injuries are highly unlikely (less than 0.1% annually).

I honestly don't know that I've ever seen a serious injury with any of our younger geckos - a bitten tail tip or foot (when feeding crickets) is about the worst I've seen and that rarely breaks the skin.  But remember - we're talking about crested geckos that don't have much of a bite, especially as babies.  For snakes and non-breeding gargoyle geckos, one per cage is the only way we do things. 

Why did this myth get its own page?
Because it's a silly myth that causes otherwise intelligent people to believe that keeping crested geckos is more difficult or complicated than it actually is, and because this silly myth has become so incredibly pervasive in our community.  An alarming number of reasonably intelligent people now seem to believe this lunacy, including breeders otherwise appear to know what they're talking about. 

This "cohabbing" myth causes crested gecko owners to buy more cages/housing, more food and more supplies than they need to, not to mention spending double or triple the amount of time feeding and cleaning.  Let that sink in for a minute and then ask yourself who might benefit from a myth like this. 

When or how did the cohabbing myth start?
Cohabbing is a term I first saw become part of the lexicon in the crested gecko (and broader reptile) hobby on Facebook, sometime in the late 2010's. This was maybe a few years after I had started talking publicly about (and defending) our practice of raising babies individually in lidless racks, and how they are plenty comfortable and actually grow considerably faster this way - low stress, no competition for food, no food-bowl-bullying, etc. 

Around this time, I started advertising that our geckos were raised individually, which is a good thing because every gecko we sell will be well-started and confident eaters - not shy.  Something you might not expect coming from a large scale breeder.  Because we're talking about social media, people heard "faster growth" and "no bullying" and it was  eventually spun into something far worse than the reality.  There are now breeders out there who tell their customers it's dangerous to house crested geckos in groups.

About the "food-bowl-bullying" mentioned above...
With crested geckos, bullying at the food bowl is usually some squeaking (gecko trash-talk) and lunging to scare off the other gecko away from a bowl of food - any experienced breeder would have known that, but many took it to mean much worse.  Physical bullying for crested geckos is usually nothing more than a squeak and/or a quick nip to the other gecko - and it's not a particularly common occurance.  Plus, young ciliatus have teeth just slightly sharper than the hook side of velcro.   If you provide enough food for everyone, then any geckos who get "bullied" can just come back and eat after the bully is finished.  Eventually, your geckos will develop a routine like this. If housed together long enough, they become familiar, bullying tends to stop as the geckos grow larger and they learn that nobody is actually a threat.

The Takeaway

1. It's completely safe to house crested geckos in groups, and now you have a proven blueprint of how to do so, which you can come back to reference at any time.  You can also post a link to this anytime you see someone spreading this myth!

2. Raising geckos individually and in groups both have advantages and drawbacks, and most serious breeders do some of both. Anyone who tells you one way is better, more natural, more correct or more ethical simply doesn't have the experience to know what they're talking about , and is therefore categorically unqualified to advise you on what you should decide. Don't forget that.

3. When it comes to breeding or keeping reptiles (if not voting and everything else in life), remember it's always best to educate yourself and check your sources to make sure they possess real world experience before you believe anything. 

Never take someone's word for it on anything just because they appear to know what they're talking about and because no one appears to be arguing with them.  People who spread misinformation on social media are almost always doing it in an attempt to look knowledgeable on a particular subject.  They don't normally react well or maturely to being exposed as unknowledgeable and misinformed.  They will almost invariably attack anyone who disagrees with them on social media, and anyone experienced with geckos enough to know those people are full of it is almost always going to be experienced enough to know they'll be attacked if they argue with a social media expert. 

4. Now that you've just done a little deep dive of your own and you know you have options, you'll be able to determine what fits best with your objectives and when it might make sense to employ one option over another. And if you get attacked for it, you can defend what you're doing and you can share a link to this page and tell them to feel free to argue with the author.