Have not watched the video yet but this is certainly a very serious issue in Beardie husbandry.
Here is a post I wrote on the topic in 2014.
BEARDED DRAGONS AND WATER
This post has been prompted by a discussion/ debate on another group where somebody has (yet again) asserted that captive Bearded Dragons do not need a water bowl and can get all the water they need from their diet. A water bowl will raise constant humidity to "dangerous levels" and is not necessary anyway as Bearded Dragons cannot recognise still water. Further... they can even drink through their cloaca!
This is a very dangerous and common misconception and one I think really needs to be addressed.
Firstly - Bearded Dragons are NOT desert lizards. Let's get that out of the way first. Sure, they can inhabit deserts. They can inhabit a LOT of environments. They are habitat generalists and pretty successful ones at that. Much like the common misconception of "Royal Pythons only live in burrows and termite mounds on savannah" this desert lifestyle has become one of those misconceptions that is bandied about so often it has become enshrined within herp culture.
While the mistake about Royal Pythons is pretty understandable - Ghana, Benin, Nigeria and Togo are hardly tourist hotspots and Royal Pythons are secretive and mostly forage at night so are difficult to find, after all - Bearded Dragons are pretty common and have often been photographed. Below are some photos of Bearded Dragons (both
Pogona barbata and
P. vitticeps) in the wild.
Yes, I also found many photos of them in dry environments, but I wanted to post these specifically to show that they are perfectly capable of living in much less arid locations as well (credits in the descriptions) - so of course a water bowl in the enclosure is not going to be a problem for them!
Second. Yes, Beardies no doubt get a lot of moisture from their diet. This still does not mean they should not be provided with a water bowl, they would lap droplets of water from rain or mist in the wild too which unless you are spraying them they are not getting in captivity (and if you are worried about the rise in ambient humidity a water bowl can provide I doubt you will be spraying them!).
YES, Bearded Dragons can and will drink, there are plenty of images on Google of them drinking, heck I have provided a photo of a wild one in a pond drinking its little Beardie heart out!
I once thought this was exceptional until I hit upon a couple pieces of information. One was this video:
Veterinarian Frances Baines also responded - '
One of my beardies also loved doing that. If she saw a water tub she would make a beeline for it and scramble in, then paddle round, duck her head underneath. She'd stay in for ages, making swimming movements, before she'd climb out. If you took her out early she'd just turn round and climb back in.'
The legendary Chris Davis had this to say: '
I have seen photos of wild Beardies actually sitting happily in shallow water. A species I seldom keep other than the odd rescue but they have ALL drunk happily out of a water bowl and more than a few have enjoyed literally jumping in it and soaking. So very, very often we see stupid opinions expressed because people haven't taken the trouble to investigate their habitat, micro-climate diet, indeed, their whole ecology in the wild.'
Roman Muryn also posted videos of Bearded dragons kept in his green house dome voluntarily entering the ponds there:
The second was Scott Eipper mentioning that Beardies have evolved to literally float away during flash floods, it is why they puff themselves up. Which makes sense really, especially when you watch Beardievet's video below...
Beardievet, who lives in
Pogona habitat, has made many videos and posts on this subject. I think best demonstrated by this one:
Next... the whole "drinking through the anus" thing...
This is a bit of a tricky one. I believe the notion that they drink through the cloaca has become commonplace for two reasons - one, the knowledge that they are well able to RETAIN water from faeces as it passes through the gut and toward the anus, and two - because the reaction of any Beardie presented with a bowl of fresh water is often simply to sit in it and take a dump. I don't know why they do this, a lot of snakes and tortoises do it too. It has been hypothesised it is so the water washes the faecs (and thus the smell of the lizard) away. But - 'retaining that last bit of moisture from faeces' as it nears excretion is not the same thing as 'sucking up liquid through the cloaca,' and indeed experiments performed with dyes have shown no water is taken up through the butt.
For example: Gibbons, Paul M. "Critical care nutrition and fluid therapy in reptiles."
Proceedings of the 15th Annual International Veterinary Emergency & Critical Care Symposium. 2009.
"
Many reptiles voluntarily drink when placed into a shallow, tepid (27–30°C) water bath for 10 min. Ensure the patient is strong enough to avoid drowning and monitor the water bath temperature with a thermometer. There is no evidence to support the hypothesis that reptiles might “drink” via the cloaca, though some authors have
misreported the results of studies on the hypothesis."
The myth seems to stem from a misinterpretation of the cloaca's function of extracting every last drop of water from the waste before it is expelled. There is NO evidence to support intake and hydration thereby of water from outside the body (via the anus - obviously they can drink).
There ARE lizards that are able to absorb moisture through the skin - some of them are even Australian, most are from hyper-arid environments (it is documented in the Moloch, it is known in Horned Lizards and I suspect it is probably quite common place in lizards of the Namib desert (a fog desert). But as above, I cannot find any evidence for it being a thing in Bearded Dragons.
Finally - I have included the abstract from just one of several veterinary reports on Bearded Dragons I have come across. Constipation is a common ailment in this species, and it would appear this is precisely because of a deficit of water in both diet and environment.
On that note, I frequently see people dissuading people from using lettuce in Beardie diets because it 'does not have many nutrients.' Water is a nutrient and plants with high water content are a useful way to get it into Beardies... especially if you are assuming that Beardies 'get all the water they need from their diet.' This is probably why we see so many impacted Beardies.
Let's at least enable our pets to imbibe water when THEY want to rather than at our whim, eh? It is not going to harm them - at worst they will just sit in the bowl and take a nice filthy poop in it, let's be honest - but changing out a water bowl every day or two is hardly back breaking work is it? Seriously - just give them a bloody water bowl, it won't harm them, you may not see them drink from it, but it might make them a bit more comfortable if they need it...
