CRITTER CLOSE-UP - Meet Puff the quirky dragon

Meet Puff, the Bunbury Wildlife Park’s resident Dwarf Western Bearded Dragon.

Senior wildlife officer Amanda Engstrom said Puff was about three-years-old and when the park first bought him, he could fit inside a takeaway container with plenty of space.

Like many of the reptiles at the park, Puff lives in a glass terrarium — the temperature of which is carefully controlled to mimic the seasons in the wild.

“We have little radars that we can point and check the temperature of the enclosure, ” Ms Engstrom said.

Puff is an ectotherm, like all reptiles, meaning he relies on external sources for heat, which is why you can often see more lizards out and about in spring and summer when the temperature is warmer.

For that reason, Ms Engstrom said his enclosure contains a “warm” area and a “cool” area — giving him the option to warm up under the heat lamp or bask on the heat rock or cool down on the wet moss.

“It is a gradient temperature, ” she said.

“We try to replicate their environment as much as possible — there is leaf litter if they need to hide or keep cool and rocks for when they slough so they can rub their old skin off.”

Ms Engstrom said the reptiles are a lot more active now as she has been slowly turning up the heat in their enclosures to mimic the change in seasons.

In his three years at the park, Ms Engstrom said Puff had shown some interesting personality quirks.

“He is a funny little fella, ” she said.

“Last year he would only eat in one place — I had to wait until he sat there and looked at me like, ‘I’m ready now’.

“And sometimes when he’s thirsty he will look at me and lick the log as if to say, ‘come on, I’m thirsty.’”

In the wild the Dwarf Western Bearded Dragon is found throughout the South West in woodlands, coastal dunes and sand plains, with an omnivorous diet of grasses, flowers, berries and insects.

At the park, Puff gets a special mix of foods including a “coleslaw” made up of fruits and vegetables including kale, hibiscus leaves and flowers, rose petals, sweet potato and strawberries.

However, Ms Engstrom said come summer, he also gets cockroaches and crickets three times a week, which he thoroughly enjoys.

“He had six big, juicy cockroaches yesterday — no problems whatsoever, ” she said.

“He is a funny little fella… sometimes when he’s thirsty he will look at me and lick the log as if to say, ‘come on, I’m thirsty’” - Amanda Engstrom