Again you hit the nail on the head. When you discribed those falconry books, you discribed many(most) monitor books exactly.

In this case, Daniel does not and has not kept monitors. He is a varanid researcher. A gatherer of varanid information. Without actual experience in keeping, successful or otherwise. He is a very good information gatherer. He is doing natural history type field research on monitors now, Greys monitors. I believe this is his first attempt at that.

So yes, you should be very skeptical when reading many is not most monitor books.

So instance, its accepted that monitors are solitary in nature. Yet in captivity, we find them to be very very social, in fact, as Tom stated, a they are socially complex, as Tom C recently discribed some other reptiles. When I investigated monitors in nature, I found them to be exactly like our captives. They paired up, much like birds, they lived in colonies, much like many birds. They had dominate males in the colony, yet paired up. Again like birds.

In fact, almost everything we see is all about socializing, for some reason or another.

The solitary behavior was supported by keepers very naive with living animals. They would capture an adult male(haggard) in one area, capture a female(old hen) in another, and think they are suppose to get along. The reality is, they would kill eachother. So yes, they had reason to think like they did.

But if they captured pairs, they would not have that problem. Or allowed them to pair up, they would not have that problem.

So instead of investigating why those haggards fought tooth and claw. They simply state, they are solitary.

Yet, we VERY SUCCESSFULLY keep all our monitors in groups.

In recent years, we have shown group nesting. You know, like Harris hawks. With both males and several females constructing and manicuring, then filling the nest after the female has laid.

Other magic things about varanid husbandry. These same experts are perplexed how we see so much with small monitors. They say, see large monitors are different. hahahahaha, Yes, large monitors are much much easier. Except for one thing, SPACE. They fail to understand, socially complex, active reptiles cannot be kept in a bird cage. You see, its very easy to keep an 18inch lizard in a 6 to 8 foot long cage. To the point, that would be like keeping a six foot monitor in a 24 to 30 foot cage. Which very very very very few do.

If you give large monitors space, its very hard to stop them. That is, if space is used correctly. Also, if any animal is crammed into small cages, any degree of social or otherwise is impossible. Ok, enough for now. Cheers

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