Maren Calloway

Hello, I'm Maren, the editorial voice of Reptile Grove.

My way into reptiles was through reading rather than through a pet store. As a kid I haunted the natural-history shelves of my local library, and I was the one who lingered in the reptile hall at the museum, reading every placard about where a species actually lives. That habit never left me. I still start with the question of what an animal's natural environment is doing for it, and then ask how a home enclosure can honestly stand in for that.

I care about this work because so much reptile advice is passed along as confident folklore. A care sheet gets copied a hundred times, a number gets rounded, a caveat gets dropped, and eventually an owner is trying to fix a problem that the advice itself created. I like going back to the sources, reading the methods before the conclusions, and noticing where the evidence is strong, where it is thin and where experienced keepers and veterinarians simply disagree.

I write about the connections that matter most for animal health: temperature gradients, UVB and calcium, humidity, enclosure size, feeder insects and what a healthy animal looks like compared with one that needs help. I also spend a lot of time on where species differ, because a setup that suits a bearded dragon can quietly harm a tortoise or a ball python.

I should be clear about what I am not. I do not keep animals at home, I do not run tests on products, and I am not a veterinarian. My work is reading, comparing and explaining, and I will always tell you when a situation is beyond what an article can handle and needs a qualified reptile or exotics vet.

Away from the desk, I am a map person, a slow birdwatcher and an enthusiastic, mediocre bread baker. I keep a running list of claims I have seen repeated online and what the research really says about them. If you spot something I have gotten wrong, please write to me, because I would much rather fix it than defend it.

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