These are great monitors, but not in the sense of keeping them on a leash or any of that. They can be shy and they are a bit more fragile that other monitors probably like the tree monitors which I haven't kept. Like them they do tend to be arboreal.

They can be shy but once they get used to you they are absolute velociraptors. I had one I kept for 10 or 11 years or so that I lost just last summer.

They are my second favorites species behind water monitors and I would probably have 20 of them if I had the room. The one I had, had a feeding response that was out of this world, I went to feed him one time and he literally flew out of the cage and went up one side of me and down the other. If he'd have had that anti-coagulant thing going on in his saliva like waters do I would have probably bled to death lol. I did not underfeed this monitor that's just the way he was and I loved it.

They do love insects but they can take rodents no problem at all, even smaller rats, in spite of what some of the older inaccurate literature says. But bugs....did I tell you they love bugs Iused to get a kick out of catching large grasshoppers and these giant katydids we have here in florida just to watch him go nuts for them it was over the top.

I am sorry for sounding like a little kid about this but dang it they are a cool monitor IMO if you set them up right and treat them like a monitor.

I don't get that dog leash thing anymore when I first got into monitors I too thought that might be cool but as I got to working with them I just think it is much cooler to set them up right and just let them be monitors. I really couldn't see doing that leash thing with a rudicollis.

Sooner or later I will get another rudicollis or perhaps a group of them but not at this point in time.

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