Can Anoles live together?

They seem peaceful, but can Anoles live together? It depends if you can follow a few simple rules. Let’s look at how to cohabit these lizards safely…

Green Anoles are a kind of lizard found in the southeastern United States and are popular pets thanks to their small size and vibrant coloration. They can live together if you follow three rules: First, never house male anoles together. Second, give each anole at least 5 cubic gallons of space. Third, never house babies with adults.

Housing anoles together

First and foremost, it is important to note that male anoles are territorial animals. They will often establish a specific area that they consider to be their own and will defend it from other anoles. If you try to house multiple male anoles together, they may fight for territory. This can lead to injuries and even death for the anoles involved.

The second thing to consider is enclosure size. The minimum enclosure size for an adult is one with a capacity of 10 gallons. You should allow an additional 5 cubic gallons of space for each anole.

So, an arboreal tank that’s 24inches high x 18inches across x 12inches deep will be perfect for three adults, at roughly a 22 gallon capacity. (The math is… Anole 1: 10gallons, Anole 2: + 5gallons, Anole 3: + 5gallons. 10 + 5 + 5 = 20gallons minimum enclosure size)

If you need to find the cubic gallon capacity of an enclosure, calculate its height x width x depth and that will give you your capacity in cubic inches. Then put that number into the converter below and you’ll get the answer in cubic gallons:

The last thing to consider is not putting babies with adults. The adults will occasionally eat them – that’s just what lizards do!

Can two female anoles live together?

More than one female can be kept in the same enclosure. However, if space or resources are limited, this could lead to fights.

There should be enough space for multiple female anoles to bask and hide without competing. Additionally, each female member should not be competing for food.

Overall, it has to be said that problems between female anoles are very uncommon. As a general rule they are fine so long as they have enough space.

Do anoles like to live together?

Anoles could be kept in groups or in solitary. Males tend to be territorial and could display and fight with each other. A group is best composed when there are multiple females and a maximum of one male.

They are delightful pets, but their natural instinct is to protect the space they live in. Males try to display dominance by extending dewlaps to appear larger to other mates.

The most important thing to anoles is breeding. So males definitely like to live with other anoles – so long as they’re female!

What can live with anoles?

Some great companions for your anole include frogs, isopods (also a snack on occasion), toads, and even other small lizards.

Ensure you always introduce species with caution as anoles are usually territorial. A few anoles might react unpredictably toward other reptiles and amphibians. You must always supervise your anole when you add a new pet to the paludarium. 

Do anoles need a companion?

Green anoles do well as solitary creatures and live perfectly fine by themselves. In the wild, one could find them in groups of a single male with many females. However, this is usually difficult to recreate in a terrarium.

They tend to be communal where mating pairs stay together. Hence they can be found with mannerisms like head bobbing or dewlap flaring, etc.

This leaves reptile owners down to the question of securing a single anole or placing multiple reptiles inside the tank. It is possible that a male on its own will get bored, though there’s no definitive evidence of this that I could find.

How many anoles can live together?

It is fine to keep anoles in a small group. You might get good results when keeping anoles in groups of three or four.

Some keep anoles in groups of six. You must ensure you only have one male in the group. Males do not get along with each other. If you put two male anoles in the same tank, they will fight.

There’s two things to consider when keeping them as a group. First is providing that 5 cubic gallons of space per animal so that they are comfortable.

Second is making sure they all can get to the basking area, and get close enough to their UVB lighting to benefit from it, even if they’re in a big tank.

Can a brown anole and a green anole mate?

Many owners ask if a green and brown anole can mate and in most cases, the answer is no. However, there has been the occasional report of a brown and green anole mating.

As far as we know, these matings don’t lead to viable offspring, though. The most likely reason for this is that the two species are just too different, genetically speaking.

Will male anoles kill each other?

If you place two males together in the same enclosure, there’s a good chance they would fight each other. The bigger one will harass the smaller one and sometimes injure, stress, or kill it.

Can male and female anoles live together?

Single males and multiple females might be housed together if the owner can create enough space. Raising a single anole by itself is ok too, but definitely not as much fun, for us or them.

Male anoles only object to being housed with other males. They would rather have all of the water, food, light, and – most importantly – females, to themselves.

Can anoles and house geckos live together?

The interesting thing about Green Anoles, Brown anoles and House Geckos is that while they live in similar environments, they are lizard species with very different activity patterns.

Anoles are diurnal, and House Geckos are nocturnal. This can make them good pets to be placed in a mixed-species terrarium as they won’t actually meet each other very often! However, it’s worth noting that anoles love eating juvenile House Geckos.

Sometimes, male Green Anoles will also attack or bully them if they notice them moving around the enclosure. My answer to this question is that female anoles can live with similarly sized House Geckos, but that males might cause issues.

How do you tell if an anole is a boy or girl?

You can identify the gender of anoles easily. Male anoles have larger bodies and bigger heads compared to female anoles. Males also have thicker tail bases which are caused by inverted hemipenes. Males are also found with colorful dewlaps.

Can you keep green and brown anoles together?

Due to brown anoles having slightly different habits to green anoles, they can get along well together. As both brown and green anoles have similar housing needs, a complicated tank setup is not needed.

The Brown Anoles will generally occupy the floor, and the Green Anoles will hang out on the walls and plants.

However, anoles will continue competing for space, light, food, water, and heat. If all the food is on the ground, the plucky little Brown Anoles will probably bully the Greens’ and get most of the food.

Likewise, if the food climbs up the walls, the Greens’ will get most of it. This is another case where a very large enclosure and close supervision will be necessary to make it work.

Can day geckos live with anoles?

This is not really recommended, but again has worked when the anoles in question were female. Thanks to the Phelsuma species being very territorial and both geckos and anoles occupying the same space there would be constant fighting for space if male anoles were present.

If the enclosure is large enough it might work. However in that case the easier thing to do would be to mix species with different niches such as arboreal and terrestrial.

Ensuring the right living conditions

Keep a hygrometer inside the enclosure to measure the relative humidity. Ensure the humidity for your anole enclosure is at 70 percent. This can be done by misting the space daily with bottled (not distilled) water. Provide your pet with a dish of the same water.

Ideally, a close-to-tropical environment needs to be created and maintained with daily temperatures of 75 to 82 F for up to 14 hours a day. Don’t try to replicate a rainforest-type temperature.

The temperature must not fall under 70 F at night. While the sun is out, the basking area with a basking light needs to cover 25-30 percent of the enclosure’s surface.

Try to reach a basking temperature of 85 to 90 F during the day. Avoid using hot rocks as heat sources as they can burn your pet and also end up overheating the space.

Lighting

Green anoles usually need up to 14 hours of light and up to 12 hours of darkness. Switch off all light sources at night. They also need UVB exposure to synthesize Vitamin D and stay healthy.

If you want to use a lamp that provides both heat and UVB light, then the 80watt Zoo Med Powersun UV bulb would give an acceptable output, so long as the anole can bask at a minimum of 10 inches below it. You can do this by putting a branch 6 inches below the lamp, for example.

Or, if you live somewhere hot and only need UVB, lamps like the Arcadia Prot5 Shadedweller would do great. For more information on this subject, I suggest checking out the Zoomed pdf on choosing the correct UV lighting.

Can anoles live together? Summary

To try to condense everything we’ve just looked at, I’ve added a quick reference table to show what male Green Anoles can live with vs what females can live with. When reading the table, keep in mind that you can only ever cohabit any species if you give them enough room!

Also, even if two species live together in peace most of the time, it won’t stop them eating each others babies.

Finally, contrary to popular belief, there are many documented cases of male Green Anoles bullying and attacking other lizards. It is not recommended to mix them with similarly sized lizards of any species.

FAQ relating to whether can anoles live together

Are anoles high maintenance?

The nice thing about anoles is they are fairly low maintenance. These usually can be great beginner reptiles for people interested. They rarely take up too much space and are gorgeous to look at. You just need to get their setup right. They need heat and UVB lighting to thrive.

Why are anoles so cheap?

Anoles are cheap because they are small. People don’t want to pay a big price for a small animal. They are cheap also due to the fact that captive breeding of the green anole doesn’t exist, so the ones you can see are mostly animals caught in the wild. They’re literally running around outside, and they can easily be collected for the pet trade, however unethical that may be.

Why is my anole turning black?

Anoles will turn black and shades of brown once they are exposed to low temperates. An anole turning dark brown or black probably meant it did not receive the ideal temperature of 70-75F minimum overnight and reacted to it.