Central Bearded Dragon (Pogona vitticeps): Wild Facts

What does a central bearded dragon look like?

The central bearded dragon has a broad, triangular head, a flattened, wide body and strong legs. Rows and clusters of pointed scales run along the sides of the head, throat and body. They look sharp, but they are fairly soft to the touch. The tail is long and tapering and makes up more than half of the total length.

Wild animals are mostly sandy brown, tan, gray or dull reddish, often with paler blotches or bands on the back, which helps them blend with the soil and leaf litter of their home area. The striking red, orange, yellow and white “morphs” seen in the pet trade come from selective breeding and are rare or absent in nature.

The most famous feature is the beard: a pouch of skin under the throat, edged with spiny scales. The lizard can push it outward and turn it dark gray to near-black. Both sexes have a beard, but males have larger, darker ones and display them far more often.

Like many lizards, bearded dragons have a small parietal eye, a light-sensitive spot on the top of the head. It cannot form images, but it detects light and helps the lizard keep track of day length and time of day. The same structure is found in iguanas, as explained in Do iguanas have a third eye?.

How big do central bearded dragons get?

Adults reach up to about 60 cm (24 in) in total length, with a head-and-body length of up to about 25 cm (10 in). Most wild adults are somewhat shorter. They usually weigh roughly 300–550 g (11–19 oz).

Males are generally larger than females, with wider, more angular heads, a thicker tail base and a better-developed beard. Their bigger heads give them a measurably stronger bite than females, which matters in fights between rival males.

Where do central bearded dragons live?

The species is found only in Australia. Its range covers the inland parts of New South Wales and Queensland, the eastern half of South Australia, the southeastern Northern Territory and the mallee country of northwestern Victoria. It does not occur in the far tropical north, in Tasmania or in the wetter coastal belt.

It lives in arid and semi-arid woodland, mallee and acacia scrub, shrubland, sandy plains and rocky desert. Bearded dragons are semi-arboreal, meaning they spend part of their time off the ground. They often perch on dead trees, stumps, rocks and fence posts, which give them sun, a lookout and a stage for displays. For a full guide to the habitat and the other Pogona species, see Where do bearded dragons live?.

What do bearded dragons eat in the wild?

Central bearded dragons are opportunistic omnivores. They eat a wide range of insects, including termites, ants, beetles, grasshoppers, caterpillars and moths, along with leaves, flowers, fruit and soft shoots. Larger adults occasionally swallow small lizards or baby rodents.

The balance shifts with age and season. Young dragons eat mostly insects, while adults take more plant material. A study of wild adults in summer found that plant matter made up just over half of the diet by volume, and that winged termites, which swarm only after rain, made up about a quarter. In a harsh, unpredictable environment, being able to eat almost anything is a real advantage.

Bearded dragons hunt mainly by sight. They wait on a perch or wander slowly through open ground, then dash forward and snap up prey with their thick tongue and jaws.

How do bearded dragons behave?

Bearded dragons are active by day. A typical summer day begins with basking in the morning sun, followed by feeding, then a retreat to shade, a burrow or a rock crevice during the hottest hours, and more basking and feeding in the late afternoon. Like all reptiles, they control their body temperature mainly by moving between sun and shade, as explained in Are reptiles cold-blooded?.

They are not truly social, but adults often occur close together where food or good perches are plentiful. Males defend territories, and the highest perches usually go to the most dominant animals.

Instead of using sound, bearded dragons talk with their bodies. Fast head-bobbing signals dominance and is used by males toward rivals and during courtship. A slow, circular wave of one front leg signals submission or recognition and is used by smaller dragons and by females. You can read more in Why do bearded dragons wave?. When threatened, a dragon flattens its body, expands and blackens its beard and opens its mouth wide to show the pale lining, as described in Why do bearded dragons puff up?.

During the cool Australian winter, roughly from May to August in the south of the range, bearded dragons become inactive in burrows or under logs. This winter dormancy in reptiles is often called brumation.

Bearded dragons have also become a favorite of scientists. Experiments have shown that they can learn a task, such as opening a small door, by watching another dragon do it, and studies of their brain activity during sleep found two distinct sleep stages, similar in some ways to the sleep stages of mammals and birds.

Reproduction and life cycle

Breeding takes place in the Australian spring and summer, mainly from about September to March. Males court females with vigorous head-bobbing and a dark beard. A receptive female answers with arm-waving and slow head-bobs.

A few weeks after mating, the female digs a burrow or shallow nest in loose soil, lays a clutch of usually about 11–30 leathery eggs and fills it in. She may lay more than one clutch in a season, and females can store sperm and produce fertile clutches without mating again. There is no parental care. The eggs hatch after roughly 55–80 days, depending on soil temperature, and the hatchlings fend for themselves from the start. They reach maturity at about one to two years.

Sex in this species is normally set by chromosomes, using a ZW system in which males are ZZ and females ZW. Research published in 2015 showed that when eggs develop at high temperatures, above roughly 32 °C (90 °F), genetic males can develop as fully fertile females. Such sex-reversed females have been found in wild populations, and scientists study them to understand how a warming climate might affect reptiles whose sex responds to temperature.

How long do central bearded dragons live?

Lifespan in the wild is poorly documented, and many dragons are taken by predators before they reach old age. In captivity, central bearded dragons commonly live about 10–15 years.

Predators and threats

Bearded dragons are eaten by birds of prey, larger lizards such as goannas (monitor lizards), snakes, dingoes and wild dogs, and introduced red foxes and feral cats. Hatchlings and young dragons are the most vulnerable, and are also taken by birds such as kookaburras and butcherbirds. Camouflage, fast sprints to cover, and the threat display are their main defenses.

People are also a hazard. Bearded dragons often bask on warm roads and are hit by vehicles, and clearing of native woodland removes perches and shelter.

Conservation status

The IUCN Red List assessed the central bearded dragon as Least Concern in 2018. It has a huge range, remains common in many areas and copes with partly cleared land as long as some trees, logs and posts remain. Like all native Australian reptiles, it is protected by law, and Australia has banned the commercial export of native wildlife since the 1960s.

Myths and facts

Myth: the spines are sharp weapons. The pointed scales look fierce, but they are fairly soft and flexible. Their job is to make the lizard look larger and harder to swallow, especially when the beard and body are puffed out.

Myth: bearded dragons live in sand dunes. Some do live on sandy ground, but the central bearded dragon is mainly a lizard of dry woodland and scrub, where it spends much of its time on branches, logs and posts rather than on open sand.

Myth: an arm-wave is a friendly hello. The wave looks like a greeting, but in wild dragons it is mainly a signal of submission or recognition, used to avoid a fight with a larger animal.

Fact: they change shade with temperature. Field studies of free-living central bearded dragons have shown that they darken their backs when cool, which helps them absorb heat faster, and lighten as they warm up.

Bearded dragons and people

Central bearded dragons are among the best-known reptiles in the world. The animals kept outside Australia descend from lizards exported before the ban or smuggled out, mostly between the 1970s and 1990, and they are now bred in very large numbers. As a result, many people in Europe and North America have seen a bearded dragon long before they see one in the wild.

In Australia itself, “beardies” are a familiar sight on country roads and fence lines. They share their dry homeland with other remarkable lizards, including the thorny devil, which lives in the sandy deserts of western and central Australia.