Posted by:
FR
at Mon Aug 14 17:03:37 2006 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by FR ]
i don't think they gave up the will to live. I think its a behavior thats indeed stress induced. They, the monitors, realize there is nothing they can do. In this case, theres nothing to climb on, nothing but the drain that their claws will hold on to. There is no sense in swimming, theres no where to swim to. So they go into neutral(sorta) My simple guess is, they hope to float until the water levels recede. Same for the floating bathtub savs.
This behavior is very common with many reptiles. For instance if you find larger monitors in nature that are not up to full metabolism, they lay down and do not run. Or commonly when you catch wild monitors, they stop fighting after you get their feet off the ground. This goes for many other types of reptiles.
This is also very common with captives and beginer keepers, They somehow think you can take a wild animal and rub its head and it will go to sleep. You read this many times a year here on KS. They rub their Savs head and it magically falls to sleep on their lap. If navity was pain, these folks would be screaming.(quote, from Joseph Lazlo, to Erine Wagner) Remember the old saying, if your flip a bluebelly(western fence lizard) over and rub its belly it will fall asleep. Also said about toads. Folks these animals are not asleep. They are stressed to a point of not having options to take.
And finally I agree, my croc monitors did not care for misting, rain or sitting in water. You have to dehydrate the beans out of them to get them to sit in water. Cheers
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RE: Jeff, Right on, sorta, - FR, Mon Aug 14 17:03:37 2006