Frank, the relic thing was more of a joke and not exacty what I think about you, well, for the most part anyway. I thought it was kind of funny.

Quote FR "Monitors seem do enjoy interaction. Which is normal and natural to their lives. To take away everything that they normally and naturally do is wrong."

Monitors and most other reptiles do not seak out or "enjoy" company. They have no social skills or structure. They do not like or love anything.

Nothing we do in captivity is "natural". You can not get any more far from "natural" when keeping these animals in our homes. The fact is, they do not "pal around" with eachother in the wild. They do not "mingle" with different species unless they are looking to eat the other said species or are competing for the same optimal conditions. Whats next? They respond to human command?

Since you are so worried about their "natural" way of life, do you let them go into aestivation? Do you allow them to cycle? Predators are also a part of their natural life. Do you throw some carpet pythons in with your Aussie varanids to spark things up?

Do not try to pull the "its happens in nature" card. Nothing we do in captivity is in any way, shape, or form, natural.

Quote FR "I mentioned that as it is, 95% or more of the monitors imported this year, will be dead by this time next year. So what do you think is the problem?"

Well unless you have actual numbers, your "95% or more" is just your unfounded opinion or guess. The % could be more or less.

The reasom why so many WC imports die is because of the entire process to get her. They are caught, kept in sub par conditions for who knows how long, shipped half way around the world in crappy conditions, arrive at wholesalers, depending on what wholesaler they end up with depends on the level of care they get.

Crappy inports will die sooner. The healthy imports will make their way into the hands of two types of keepers. The bad one being the kid or adult that still thinks newspaper and a heat lamp is all that is needed to keep a monitor alive. Obviously even good wc imports will not do well for long. The lucky ones will make their way into capable keepers hands like yours, mine, and some of the other posters on this site. They will have the best chance of a healthy captive life. There is however, no guarantee they will make it even in the best of hands.

There are many problems, not just one and I seriously doubt the deaths have anything to do at all with a varanid not being able to hang out with its little turtle buddies. Stress from being caught, housed in filthy crowed conditions, being shipped and put back into more crowed condition before being shiped again will cause a reptiles immune system to crash allowing parasites and pathogens seriously affect a reptiles health when it would normally deal with these things easily. Adding more stress by introducing a foreign species is not only not the best thing to do but it is also a stupid thing to do. And to tall someone (who is apparently new to keeping these animals) that it is ok to mix species is beyond stupid.

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