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#2253064 TheSnakeWhisperer View Profile	Is this normal behaviour for a Monitor? My Uncle has had his Savannah Monitor for four and a half years now. He is healthy, happy, and well taken care of. Every time my Uncle goes near Ernie’s enclosure he immediately runs towards the doors to come out, when he is let out he will stay on or very close to my Uncle, if any one else tries to hold Ernie he will tail whip, hiss, bite, and hold on to my Uncle for dear life, and when my Uncle goes to put Ernie back in to his enclosure he will hold on to my Uncle tightly - It’s definitely a struggle to get him back in to his enclosure. I’ve always found this behaviour very odd but i never really thought much of it until recently. Is it possible that Ernie has become attached to my Uncle - I hate using this as an example but - kind of like a dog would become attached to their owner? Or is it just that my Uncle is a "security blanket" for Ernie? Any other logic?
01/28/12  01:05pm
#2253210 Mdf View Profile	Message To: TheSnakeWhisperer   In reference to Message Id: 2253064  Is this normal behaviour for a Monitor? I would say they do give different levels of trust to different people, the monitor knows he/she can trust the person that’s been feeding them for over 4 years. As for not wanting to go back in i’m not sure! mine always wanted to back into an environment which offers everything they need once they had been fed, maybe the room they go in offers the same environment which makes no difference to the monitor & results in the monitor wanting to stay out. from a monitors point of view though this could be good or bad, but at 4.5 years it’s maybe good!
01/29/12  02:02pm
#2253301 Krusty View Profile	Message To: Mdf   In reference to Message Id: 2253210  Is this normal behaviour for a Monitor? Maybe the cage is so horrific that the lizard clings to his leg saying, ’please please please don’t put me back in that cell!!!’. Describe the cage though seriously.
01/30/12  09:21am
#2253591 TheSnakeWhisperer View Profile	Message To: Krusty   In reference to Message Id: 2253301  Is this normal behaviour for a Monitor? Quote: Maybe the cage is so horrific that the lizard clings to his leg saying, ’please please please don’t put me back in that cell!!!’. Describe the cage though seriously. I apologize for my late response, but i had to get the details from my uncle. His enclosure is 8’x6’x5’, he has two hides (Not including the burrows he has made in the substrate or the branches that he has in there). The basking spot ranges from 120 to 125 degrees Fahrenheit, the ground temperature ranges from 85 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit depending on the location. The substrate is 50/50 play sand and soil and about 2 1/2 feet deep. The humidity ranges from 70 to 75%. I’m not sure what else you need to know, that is all i could think of to ask him. If you need anything else, let me know.
02/01/12  03:02pm
#2253592 Krusty View Profile	Message To: TheSnakeWhisperer   In reference to Message Id: 2253591  Is this normal behaviour for a Monitor? That sounds like a solid cage and temperatures. Good job uncle.
02/01/12  03:05pm
#2253700 Mdf View Profile	Message To: TheSnakeWhisperer   In reference to Message Id: 2253591  Is this normal behaviour for a Monitor? that sounds good to me! :) Get some pics! always like pictures of monitors. :)
02/02/12  02:24pm
#2253776 Webzpinner View Profile	Message To: TheSnakeWhisperer   In reference to Message Id: 2253064  Is this normal behaviour for a Monitor? In the 90’s, I had a CB Savannah I raised from 2 days old to 3 1/3ft long. She was a beauty and VERY single-person oriented (me). She’d lay on my chest while I read a book, come to me if I sat on the ground wanting neck rubs, and would his and puff at anyone else who would interrupt our "bonding" time. Putting her in her cage wasn’t difficult, since it was on the ground with a top-loading lid, so all I had to do was open the lid then come back and get her and put her back in. The hard part was watching her pace back and forth, and stare at me, wondering why she had to go back in her cage. She’d paw at the glass for a 1/2hr or so, but then finally give up and bask or hide in a soda box. So, that being said, I think your uncle has one of the rare "ultra lovey" spoiled monitors that just really thrive on being next to "their" human. It’s far better than the aloof, flighty, bitey personality.
02/02/12  11:01pm
#2253791 Crocdoc View Profile	Message To: Webzpinner   In reference to Message Id: 2253776  Is this normal behaviour for a Monitor? What happened to the monitor you had in the 90s? For how long did it live?
02/03/12  01:37am
#2253818 TheSnakeWhisperer View Profile	Message To: Mdf   In reference to Message Id: 2253700  Is this normal behaviour for a Monitor? @Krusty Quote: That sounds like a solid cage and temperatures. Good job uncle He researched excessively before he purchased his savannah monitor, and he continues to do research to see if anything has improved/changed. I swear he will do anything for that monitor. I am sure he would appreciate that compliment, his heart and mind revolves around that little Sav. @mdf Quote: Get some pics! always like pictures of monitors. :) I will definitely grab a few pictures next time i’m up there. Unfortunately i moved about four hours away from my uncle so i don’t get up there too often anymore. @Webzpinner Quote: So, that being said, I think your uncle has one of the rare "ultra lovey" spoiled monitors that just really thrive on being next to "their" human. It’s far better than the aloof, flighty, bitey personality. I’m not sure i would call any monitor "ultra lovey" or say some "thrive on human interaction", they are still unpredictable animals, Ernie has given my uncle quite a few good bites through out the years - Even though he has some sort of "attachment" to my uncle, but i would definitely have to agree with Mdf and say his behaviour simply has to do with trust. & I would prefer a monitor with typical monitor traits as it assures me that it is healthy and thriving, i don’t want to have any doubts when it comes to my animals health.
02/03/12  12:54pm
#2253821 Webzpinner View Profile	Message To: Crocdoc   In reference to Message Id: 2253791  Is this normal behaviour for a Monitor? I had to re-home her, because I was planning to go to college, and my parents refused to care for the reptiles.... Rehomed her to a guy who worked for the AZ Fish & Game dept.
02/03/12  01:10pm
#2253824 Mdf View Profile	Message To: TheSnakeWhisperer   In reference to Message Id: 2253818  Is this normal behaviour for a Monitor? it would be great to see your uncle’s sav, 2 weeks a go a had a rescue reserved, but i chickened out at the last mo! :)
02/03/12  01:20pm
#2253876 Crocdoc View Profile	Message To: Mdf   In reference to Message Id: 2253824  Is this normal behaviour for a Monitor? Webzpinner, where did she lay her eggs? Also, what made you think she was CB?
02/03/12  07:52pm
#2253964 Webzpinner View Profile	Message To: Crocdoc   In reference to Message Id: 2253876  Is this normal behaviour for a Monitor? Uh... she never laid eggs. I never had her with a male, and as far as anyone knows, exanthematicus isn’t capable of parthenogenesis. Also, she was one of 4 hatchlings from a clutch of 9 eggs from the guy who owned an exotic reptile store. He thought he had two females in a large crate converted into a tank, and after two years of them being together, he came in one day to feed them, and in one corner was a nest with eggs in it. He took ’em all out, put them in an incubator he used for his python breeding, and most went bad, but 4 hatched without problem. Soooooooooooooooooo.... THAT’S what makes me think she was cb.... coz she was bred and born in captivity.
02/04/12  09:06pm
#2253981 Crocdoc View Profile	Message To: Webzpinner   In reference to Message Id: 2253964  Is this normal behaviour for a Monitor? Quote: Uh... she never laid eggs. I never had her with a male, and as far as anyone knows, exanthematicus isn’t capable of parthenogenesis. Uh...A lone female laying eggs isn’t parthenogenesis, it’s just a lone female laying eggs. Females kept under the right conditions do just that. However, if you were to incubate those eggs and have some hatch, THAT’S parthenogenesis. As an aside, parthenogenesis has been reported in a couple of monitor species so far. Not sure why the attitude. I was curious about the CB because a lot of pet/reptile store owners tell people they were bred on site. They rarely are. But, presuming you saw the pair and the eggs in the incubator, consider yourself quite lucky.
02/05/12  01:26am
#2254000 Webzpinner View Profile	Message To: Crocdoc   In reference to Message Id: 2253981  Is this normal behaviour for a Monitor? Well, mine was kept under very good conditions, and was in excellent health for the 4 years I had her. She started out eating only crickets, earthworms, and mealworms as a tiny hatchling in a 10gal tank, to just over 3 feet long, eating earthworms, superworms, mice, occasional bird, and snails, custom enclosure, and a heat lamp on one side, uv lamp, etc. This was all in the 90’s, so I was a tad beyond conventional wisdom for monitors at the time, coz I researched as much as I could on their natural habitat and trying to replicate that (ok, well, soda boxes weren’t in the natural habitat, but she was rough on her hiding spots, and these were cheap to replace) and the diet. She had a vet that was an exotics specialist (did the sexing probe for determination). But in those 4 years, she never laid eggs. And yes, the breeder is a VERY honest guy. the store-stock animals he would sell would not be put up for sale until after a month of eating regularly, a successful shed (in the case of snakes), and all animals sold with their feeding history chart, so the new owner would have an idea of the feeding schedule and food-types the animal was used to. The monitors were, as I said, a fluke. He wasn’t expecting them to breed. His major breeding passion was ball pythons and reticulated.
02/05/12  01:12pm
#2254019 Varanus_odom View Profile	Message To: Webzpinner   In reference to Message Id: 2254000  Is this normal behaviour for a Monitor? Haha, soda boxes as hide spots. We’ve come a long way since the 90’s...
02/05/12  03:42pm
#2254028 Crocdoc View Profile	Message To: Varanus_odom   In reference to Message Id: 2254019  Is this normal behaviour for a Monitor? Quote: She had a vet that was an exotics specialist (did the sexing probe for determination). If my vet went anywhere near any of my monitors with a probe, I’d fire him and go to another vet. He wouldn’t, though, as he’s a reptile vet. You can’t sex monitors by probing for two main reasons: 1. They have a far more muscular tail than snakes, so the risk of injury is extremely high. 2. Females have hemiclitori, so even if you were able to probe them safely the results would be inconclusive. If the honest exotic pet store guy was upstanding as you say and wouldn’t sell a reptile until it had been feeding for a month, he wouldn’t have sold you a baby monitor only two days after hatching. I hold onto my hatchling lace monitors for a month before selling them. On one occasion I’ve sold one after only two weeks of feeding because it was a local pickup and the person had raised baby monitors before. I’m not attacking you, I’m just pointing out that we’ve come a long way since the 90s and sometimes things aren’t quite what they seem. After years on this forum I’ve seen dozens of people who have bought savannah monitors in the belief that they were bred on site by the owner of a reptile store. It’s possible it happens on occasion, but no one seems to ever see the parents, eggs, incubator etc. Perhaps you have, I don’t know. Incubating monitor eggs in an incubator set hot enough for python eggs could certainly reduce the hatch rate to 50%.
02/05/12  05:01pm
#2254066 Webzpinner View Profile	Message To: Crocdoc   In reference to Message Id: 2254028  Is this normal behaviour for a Monitor? Quote: If the honest exotic pet store guy was upstanding as you say and wouldn’t sell a reptile until it had been feeding for a month, he wouldn’t have sold you a baby monitor only two days after hatching. I’d been a good customer of the store and a friend for a while. It wasn’t like I just walked in. I’d gone to his store for several years. He knew I’d be a responsible owner. Also, his 1 month eating rule was generally for those animals he got that were wild caught individuals or those that he was unsure of their origin (such as someone coming in with a bunch of milksnake babies, or a bucket of turtles). His own bred animals he’d sell when he felt they were ready for a new home. And yes, at the time, there was literally NOTHING above rumors on what to do to raise monitors. "Reptile" magazine wasn’t around, there was one or two paperback "how to" books, and that was it. He just did research on other reptiles in the area on what temperatures they incubate at, and approximated the best he could. And yes, the parents were onsite occasionally. They had a huge corner enclosure that sometimes they were in, but they were mostly his own home pets. He’d bring them in at times to show people that the little cute lizards scrambling for crickets turn into Godzilla. I haven’t been there in 15 years, but chances are pretty good he’s on a reptile forum or bulletin board somewhere. His obsession for python breeding and reptile husbandry would probably get a huge thumbs up by everyone here. If I knew his current contact info, I’d go to him before I’d trust a random name on the internet.
02/05/12  08:45pm

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