The "Cohabbing" Myth (Busted)
by Anthony Caponetto
What is Cohabbing?
If you've not heard the term "cohabbing", consider yourself lucky. It refers to the practice of keeping more than one crested gecko in an enclosure - like everyone did until about 10 years ago.
The myth, as it relates to this method of housing crested geckos, is that this species should be housed alone, and not in an enclosure with other crested geckos. Because it's allegedly bad, which is a notion that I aim to bury.
Why did this myth get its own page?
While I don't go out of my way to correct every bit of gecko-related nonsense I see posted on social media, this one is quite literally the most ridiculously, mind-numbingly stupid thing I've ever heard in the reptile hobby.
Aside from being incredibly stupid, it's actually really bad for the crested gecko hobby, as it unnecessarily complicates the care of an incredibly simple species to keep. New keepers and aspiring breeders won't be told this nonsense when asking about leopard geckos or other gecko species, so they'll inevitably end up choosing a species of gecko that's actually more difficult to keep and breed.
It also causes people to buy multiples of the housing, food and supplies that they would normally need, not to mention spending double or triple the time feeding and cleaning.
When or how did this myth start?
Cohabbing is a term created within the crested gecko hobby, on Facebook, sometime in the late 2010's. This was around the time I started talking publicly about our practice of raising babies individually, and how they grow considerably faster this way.
When kept individually, the rate of growth is much faster it would be in the wild, to the point of causing geckos grow to a larger adult size than they would if raised at a natural pace. After doing this for a few years, I actually 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 something you expect coming from a large scale breeder. I was the only crested gecko breeder I had ever heard of trying this method, and everyone else was having plenty of success raising them in groups at that time. I had no idea that my (at the time, radical) method of raising our most prized geckos was going to become mandatory husbandry protocol. :-)
Somehow, faster growth when housed individually got spun into people claiming it's actually dangerous to house crested in groups - never mind the fact that literally everyone breeding crested geckos housed them in small groups up until a few years prior. Before long, they came up with a name for this "controversial" practice: Cohabbing.
Why is "cohabbing" allegedly bad?
Long story short, I've seen posts insinuating that the geckos will harm one another, cause stress and that males will continue to harass females in order to breed with them. This is all complete nonsense and I have over 20 years of "cohabbing" experience on a large scale to back it up.
Below is a list of reasons I've read that "cohabbing" is bad:
1. "Cohabbing works until it doesn't."
What exactly does that mean? No one knows, exactly. :-)
The people spreading this nonsense typically only talk in anecdotes and never actually explain themselves - especially when pressed by someone who has the actual experience to know they're only repeating a falsehood that they read somewhere.
It's risky to elaborate when your goal is to look like an expert and you're fully aware that you don't know what you're talking about, so they keep it vague.
2. "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should."
More vague, anecdotal words of wisdom that tell us precisely nothing. But it does sound wise. :-)
If only people would apply this nugget of wisdom to the act of handing out advice on things with which one has no real world experience. I mean, you can act like you know what you're talking about, but you probably shouldn't because eventually you'll encounter someone who knows better.
3. "Crested geckos are solitary creatures."
The majority of our 5,000 breeders tend to sleep in piles together in the same hide area, obviously because they don't have access to social media. :-)
4. "Just because cohabbing works for someone else, doesn't mean it will for you."
Yep, another vague, anecdotal line of utter BS that that conveniently avoids making a specific statement.
Unlike humans, Correlophus ciliatus is not a species prone to fighting due to cultural differences. We have housed geckos from Kansas and geckos from California in the same cage for 20 years straight without even one Thanksgiving being ruined by politics or religion. Ok, I'll stop being a wiseass, but I could totally keep it going. :-D
The reality - crested geckos will behave however crested geckos do, no matter who owns them or where they live. You're not going to be extra "unlucky" and witness horrible fighting and geckos being maimed by one another. Not exactly a controversial statement, but apparently this needed to be clarified.
If you think an entire group of people won't spread misinformation like it's the gospel truth, let me tell you a story.
I come from the world of python breeding, where it was a "known fact" for decades that you have to cool your pythons for the winter in order for them to breed in the spring. Breeders spent countless hours adjusting thermostats every winter and spring, and even more time on forums talking about the best way to do it without making their snakes become sick, etc. As it turned out, we didn't need to cool our pythons at all. The only thing cooling pythons for the winter actually does is cut down on the number of clutches you get in the spring.
I stopped cooling my pythons in 2004, which was when I started talking to other breeders about the necessity of cooling, and quickly decided it sounded like total BS. That year, I produced twice as many snakes as I did the season prior, and I was able to successfully breed one species that no one had bred before. That's why and when the thought of people handing out advice that they didn't actually *know* to be accurate/sound became a huge pet peeve of mine.
The Reality of "Cohabbing"
Safety
It is absolutely safe to keep geckos of the same size in an enclosure together, provided you're not putting two or more sexually mature males in the same enclosure (a visible bulge means they're mature or are maturing). In that situation, there most likely will be fighting or bullying, unless the males started living together before they became sexually mature.
Interesting fact: Mature males that were housed together prior to puberty (bulge appearing) will rarely fight, even with mature females in the cage. We've had multiple customers set up large cages of juveniles with 2-3 males and 2-3 females and had great luck with them into adulthood, even with breeding, though it's nearly impossible to know who the parents are.
Breeding Groups
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.
Occasionally, we'll have a female stake her claim to the nest box and prevent other females from using it. In that situation, you'll find eggs on the floor repeatedly, which can help to clue you in that this might be happening. Once I've confirmed we have a nest box bully, we'll move her into a group with females larger than her, or into a cage of her own.
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. Other times, they can be very creative, as shown in the photo below (they stayed like that for 20 minutes, just FYI).
Younger Geckos
With 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, I do house them alone, but that doesn't make housing them in groups a bad thing, and it most certainly doesn't make it unnatural.
When you're raising young geckos individually, there is quite a large trade-off in terms of time and money...you're making more cups of food, cleaning or replacing more water bowls, cleaning more enclosures, you're spending more time overall, and they take up more space. For a lot of breeders, and most hobbyists, it's probably not worth raising them individually. And in all reality, captive geckos raised in groups are still going to grow much faster than they ever would in the wild.
What do professional breeders say in private conversations about cohabbing?
One of us will typically use the word "cohabbing" in a sentence in an effort to make the other one laugh. Experienced breeders don't spend their time talking about something this ridiculous because they already know better. :-)
What do the people posting this nonsense on social media say when confronted for spreading misinformation?
Because wannabe experts never like to admit it when they get called out for handing out BS advice (based on something they read, not actual experience), most of them will actually double down and continue to repeat the goofy anecdotes above.
If someone tells you cohabbing is a bad idea after being confronted with all the facts pointed out on this page, that's who you're dealing with - an internet expert who can't admit they were repeating nonsense that they read on social media. Needless to say, I'd get my advice elsewhere.
What do I say to someone who tells me I'm a bad keeper for keeping my crested geckos together?
Direct them to this page, so you don't have to be the one labeling their advice as "stupid". :-)
