Bearded dragon gender – male or female
Determining the gender or sex of your bearded dragon is vital if you want to breed them. While it is challenging to do so in baby and juvenile beardies, you can do it once they reach sexual maturity. Here is how to tell if your beardie is a male or female.
1. Consider their size
Males are more massive, longer, and more robust with broader darker heads and thicker tail bases when compared with females that have smaller heads, and slender tails that taper.
2. Check for hemipenal bulge
In males, the thicker tail base houses the hemipenes while females don’t hemipenes except for a single bump closer to the center of their tail.
To confirm, check for the presence of hemipenal bulges located at the base of the tail on either side just before their cloaca (vent). Raising their tails or letting them lie of their back will help you see two bumps and a dent in the middle.
Also, flashing a spotlight from the back of their tail and looking at them from the lower side may help you see these hemipenal bulges. Their presence positively indicates that your bearded dragon is male.
3. Femoral pores
Once they reach their adulthood, they develop femoral pores (waxy bumps) located across their hind legs. Males have more visible, and large ones, as opposed to females, who have small ones, which are hard to see at times.
4. Behavioral consideration
By observing their behavior, animal behavioralists can intelligently guess the gender of this lizard. Males tend to display their beards, head bob, and so on more often than females.