>>I sure hope this is not the burden of proof that you hold science to. By your own statement, this own study site is the exception, and now you are making blanket case assumptions off of it. I would question why you can't find many 'babies' elsewhere, and then question how you would know there aren't any within 100's of meters. The only logical conclusion from your statement would be that you can't reliably find 'baby' monitors.

>>

Yes, a trend is shown by multiple individuals over multiple populations. That the primary rainforest offers less ground cover than the high, often over 2m high grass in the central floodplain swamps or the tangled masses of vegetation in the mangroves easily explains why they are easier to find. In my own home area, I rarely find them. One of these hatchlings made his home outside a hide that I occupied for several days. One large monitor came within a metre of me, surely if these hatchlings lived in groups, I would have seen one of his group, since I had other monitors come very close to my position or maybe this is just one of the ‘homeless’ monitors that everyone else sees, but one problem, it did have a home, right outside of my hide.



(The hatchling that stayed outside of my hide for days)



Since this area of protected rainforest is not often disturbed, that is the key, not often disturbed, so, yes, I am confident that I can reliably ‘find’ baby monitors. Can I find adult monitors more reliably? Of course! Medium and large sized monitors are not easily missed, compared to a 20-50cm ‘baby’. So, where in the field have you seen or anyone seen groups of hatchlings hanging out in a group? Sure, I could throw a bunch of hatchlings together in a box and presto; they are living in a group. They will assimilate through their forced proximity or they will die of stress from the inability to assimilate (otherwise all monitors would get along). Sorry, that is not the way things work ‘outside the box’.



Cheers,

Michael

[ Show Entire Thread ]