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I see your cupcakes, and raise you Jell-O shots.

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Bearded Dragons, Sand, and You

One of the most common pieces of advice new bearded dragon owners hear from reptiblr people is “don’t keep your beardies on sand!” This is immediately followed with warnings about impaction and infection and the potential for all sorts of nastiness and death- and those are absolutely true.

But then you maybe see pictures like this and go “uh… that’s… that’s sand.”

And yes, yes it is sand. But it’s not the kind of sand that comes out of a bag from the pet store! But what makes it different? Why can bearded dragons thrive on this sand and not that sand? 

I’ll give you a little summary now in case you don’t want to read the whole thing. Basically, Australian sand is more compact and has a heavy clay component and there’s damp soil for burrows available under the outer layers. This means that the soil is less dusty and less likely to cause impaction, especially because the humidity in the burrows means that the beardie is less likely to be dehydrated.

If you’d like to know why the sand is this way, there’s a little geology involved. So let’s talk a little bit about how Australian sand dunes work! The sand dunes in places like the Simpson Desert- in the central/arid zone- formed about 20,000 years ago. Once a sand dune has formed, any rain soaks in and the dune has a damp inner core. Below the sand there’s a clay swale- a layer of clay that holds water. These dunes are stable and actually hold burrows really well! On top of the dunes, plants like saltbush and other scrubby, small things colonize the more unstable areas, holding the dunes in place and keeping the soil/sand from getting too dusty.

What that means is that the sand’s actually quite damp and compact past the top layer and you can get beardies living quite happily in dugout burrows like this!

Loose, blowing sand sometimes ends up on the road, but it’s not the dominant soil type in the dunes where they live. This is a picture from the Rainbow Valley Reserve in Alice Springs, where that first pic was taken- see how the natural soil’s tamped down? This is a clay pan, which is one of the most common soil types in the Australian outback.

Furthermore, Australian soil is different from the soil anywhere else in the world. There’s a couple of reasons for this. Australia has no large native herbivores. This plays a huge part in soil development elsewhere- native hoofstock overturns the soil with grazing. In the grand scheme of things, this has meant that Australia’s soil formation has been very different from other continents’ soil formation. Also important is that Australia had no glacial period. On other continents, glaciers moved a lot of the soil around, stripping regions down to their deeper layers or bedrock, and forcing new soil formation processes. This created loamy, loose topsoils. That didn’t happen in Australia- the soil formation process was much slower and as a result, the soil there is a lot higher in clay. Sand particles in the desert are relatively large and solid and compact, and that compaction is a huge part of what makes it possible to hold burrows. Also, the inner dampness of the clay means that the humidity in those burrows is relatively high. 

Now, compare that to the sand you get at the pet store. The grains are fine and the sand is super dusty- and there’s no clay in it! Also, when sand is usually put down in a bearded dragon cage, it’s in a fairly thin layer. It’s not deep enough to allow burrowing or to hold any humidity. Check it out- here’s a bearded dragon cage with sand in it.

Let’s look at that picture of the burrow again.

See how deep that is and how different it is from the sort of sand provided in the cage? The sand dunes in Australia are part of the natural ecosystem and are more than just pure sand. They’re quite complicated compared to the stuff you can buy at the pet store! 

Image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Works cited: 

“Sand Dunes.” Australian National Botanic Gardens/Australian National Herbarium, 2012. Available online:  http://www.anbg.gov.au/photo/vegetation/sand-dunes.html

“The Soils of Australia.” Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1996 (updated 2012). Available online:  http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Previousproducts/1301.0Feature%20Article801966

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Nox, Manchitas, Leia.

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Draco