#tiger salamanders

[antiqueanimals]

About Amphibians: A Guide for Children, written by Cathryn Sill and illustrated by John Sill, 2000.

[great-and-small]

when the jets in the hot tub turn off and ur just sitting there like

[amazingpetenclosures]

Tiger Salamander enclosure by @Vanessa A Spicer

[entomoposting]

please look at these images of my tiger salamanders

[leviathan939]

Did a little tidying in the tiger salamander setup tonight. I sure do love these dirt babies.

[beckwillspets-blog]

We haven't posted any pictures of Wayne & Cass in a while and I feel that they need some love

[great-and-small]

Apparently I don’t have enough to worry about because Bunyip decided to give me some serious stress the other day. He was out begging for worms and I noticed a little thing off about him- can you see it?

I pulled him out of his tank for a better look, you can see it really well here:

You guessed it- Bunyip has Anisocoria (meaning one of his pupils is more dilated than the other). This was pretty scary because this can be a sign of head trauma or neurological disease. I reached out to a veterinary ophthalmologist at my vet school with the pics and she agreed to take a look at him for me. Bunyip got a full eye exam!

The doc made sure there was no inflammation in the affected eye, which was her biggest concern. After we got the all clear on that she tested his eye pressure with a teeny tiny tonometer, which was very cute. Bunyip tried to eat the light a few times but was otherwise a very good patient. The ophthalmologist called an exotics specialist to talk turkey about salamander eye diseases but the ultimate conclusion was that an infectious cause would likely result in a change in behavior or appetite which I certainly have not seen. His eyes have returned to normal (yay!) so for now I am going to closely monitor Bunyip for another episode of anisocoria or signs of illness. The docs suspect some sort of neurological cause, which is scary but he is young and is behaving normally so let’s keep our fingers crossed!

Just because your pet is small and slimy doesn’t mean they don’t deserve proper care! If you have an exotic pet find a qualified vet you trust and stick with them, it’s always best to get things like this checked out as soon as possible. Our pets are counting on us to give them our best!

[great-and-small]

Why study when you can make extremely niche memes