Eye Bulging

It's pretty normal for some reptiles to "bulge" their eyes out. They have a little blood vessel flap they can open that releases blood into their eye sockets, forcing their eyes to push out into their eye lids. When they are done, the little flap opens again and the blood returns to the vessel.

The first time you see eye bulging, you might be creeped out. It looks like their eyes are going to explode.

I've seen it on bearded dragons, chameleons, and iguanas.

They do it if their eyes are itchy or if their skin is shedding or if there is something in their eyes or if they are bored or whatever. My beardie rescue Dory had a malfunction with the blood vessel flap behind one eye and so her eye was perpetually swollen. Turbo, my sweetheart iguana, developed an aneurysm behind one of his eyes and it was a mess every time he rubbed the eye and it ruptured. That poor iguana lost SO much blood. He eventually had to have is eye removed because it had died after being shoved up into his eyelid for so long.

So next time you see your beardie (or iguana or chameleon) and it looks like their eyes are going to bulge out of their heads, don't panic. It's totally normal. :)

Bulging Eyes

One of the creepiest things bearded dragons do (and iguanas too!) is bulge their eyes out. The first time I saw it, I thought my beardie's eyes were about to explode out of his head. 

I'm not exactly sure why they do it, but I do know that they are able to flood the backs of their eyes with blood to push them out. Then they are able to allow the blood to flow back into the veins and return their eye socket to normal. 

This morning I caught Dory bulging her "normal" eye and took pics. 

Her bulged eye was as big as her big eye. Once she realized I was taking pictures, she let her eye return to normal. 

Dr Folland and I think Dory's fat eye is caused because she's unable to pull the blood back out of her eye. So it's a reflux problem that causes one eye to always be huge, filled with blood. 

Normal eye-- 

Bulgy eye-- 

Bulging eyes and black beards are two normal things for bearded dragons and they don't always signal a problem.